D S 

■Ub3 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap. ... 

Shelf JJ.k_2> 



THE 

EDINBURGH EEVIEW 

AND THE 

AFFGHAN WAR. 

LETTERS RE-PRINTED FROM THE MORNING HERALD. 



" Thou shalt do no Murder." 

" Shall I not visit for these things? saith the Lord: and shall 
not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this."— Jer. v. 9. 



D. URQUH ART, ESQ, 



1 1 




LONDON: 

JAMES MAYNARD, PANTON STREET, HAYMARKET. 
1843, 

CI 



REPORT OF THE COLONIAL SOCIETY 

ON 

THE AFFGHAN WAR. 



In the press, and immediately to appear, 

BY THE SAME AUTHOR, 

AN APPEAL AGAINST FACTION 
TO THOSE WHOM IT CONCERNS. 



LETTER I. 



DISASTER OF CABOOL AND POPULARITY OF 
SHAH SHOOJAH. 



Sir,-— The Edinburgh Review has opportunely lit upon the 
metropolis in a flight of sprightly wings "of saffron and of blue." 
No. 154 appeared in January, No. 155 appears in February ! 
It is for no trifling purpose that the calculating sages of the north 
thus disturb the routine of periodical parturition; it is in no 
minor cause that they, thus unlooked for, burst into the arena all 
armour and offence. 

The present number appears as the vehicle of a simulated 
attack upon the Government, and upon Lord Ellenborough, 
thereby to serve as a defence for Lord Auckland, Lord Pal- 
merston, and Sir John Hobhouse. 

The number of the Edinburgh Review which appeared in due 
course in January was silent on the great question of the day, 
and the great glory or crime of the party it represents. Thus did 
the whig reviewers lull into security their unwary opponents, 
while in silence preparing this projectile to drop and explode at 
the very moment of the debate, and leave no time for refutation 
or reply. The mere form and circumstance would lead to the 
inference that it was a case prepared maid fide; but whether it be 
an attempt consciously made to arrest the course of justice, or 
whether it be proposed through a desire, honest, but misguided, 
to screen the innocent, this article must equally appear a defence 
the most questionable and suspicious. The accused if not guilty, 
must be the first to demand, and the most instant to require 
the fullest investigation ; and they would reject officious defence, 
as unworthy of them, and unsuited to the charge. 

If honest men, they are assailed for labours which entitle them 
to the gratitude of the country they have served. It is their duty 
to establish their claims to gratitude as well as to rebut accusa- 
tions which, if unfounded, are the most atrocious that malignity 
could invent. 

The article in the Edinburgh Review assumes to have trium- 
phantly disposed of the allegations brought against the late 
Government by Sir Robert Peel, and — myself. That which I have 
charged against the late Government is not that which has been 
charged against them by Sir Robert Peel. The present whig 
defence has not ventured to grapple with one single statement of 
mine, and it is perfectly gratuitously, in respect to the subject 
matter, that my name is coupled with that of Sir Robert Peel, 

B 



2 



But by this coupling of the two names the double object may be 
sought, 1st, of assuming that I have been replied to, and 2ndly, 
of endeavouring to shame Sir Robert Peel out of the position of 
assault upon the late Government, lest he should be placing 
himself by the side of a man whose allegations were too extra- 
vagant for public complacency and too grave for parliamentary 
etiquette. 

In replying, therefore, to this article it is not in my own 
defence that I come forward, nor can I presume to defend Sir 
Robert Peel. In so far as he lias gone his positions are clear 
and indestructible, and in that which he has failed to do, it 
cannot be for me to defend him. This defence, therefore, must 
consist in taking up the weapons which are paraded, in order to 
show that these weapons are not formed of materials that can 
inflict wounds upon real bodies— that they are phantom shafts, 
cast to exhibit before an audience the semblance of a contest, 
and to confuse and bewilder the antagonists against whom they 
are discharged. 

The article in the Edinburgh Review is another attempt to put 
the innocent men in the place of the criminal before the bar of 
public opinion, and thereby to prevent the criminal from being 
Drought before the bar of national justice. 

About the middle of the second page occurs the first intellgible 
statement. The reviewer denies that the disasters in Afghanistan 
can be chargeable upon " the men who had viewed the establish- 
ment of a friendly dynasty in Afghanistan as being the least 
dangerous and costly means by which the designs of foreign 
powers upon British India would be defeated." 

In the defence of a Government, which on behalf of a nation 
has taken up arms and appealed to the God of Battles, the first 
thing that has to be asserted, and the only thing that has to be 
considered, and through which the whole question must be de- 
cided, is the cause of war. But in the present case, they come 
forward with no statement of wrongs or of dangers — they come 
forward only with an insinuation of what their object may have 
been. The assertion is, that the least of the dangers that had to 
be incurred, and the cheapest of the means that had to be 
employed, was to set up a certain dynasty in a certain country, 
and that because of there being certain unstated designs of certain 
other unnamed powers ! The establishment of a certain dynasty 
in Afghanistan was, "upon the whole, the least dangerous, 
the least costly of the means" by which those foreign name- 
less designs upon India could be defeated. What then is 
the position of India now when the attempt has failed ! The 
cheapest and easiest of these means are the lives of 15,000 
British subjects, and nearly 20 millions of pounds sterling jj 
How enormous then must have been the dangers ? These are 
expended, and in vain. You asserted one chief at Cabool to be 
hostile, and you leave as the result of the expenditure every man 
woman, and child, your foe from the Ural to the Indus. If India 



3 



was endangered in 1838, what must, in 1843, that danger be, 
which has not been grappled with, after the frightful augmentation 
it has received from our attempt and failure? The reviewer, 
for whom these designs must have been reality, must be now 
writhing under the sense of the most fearful insecurity of our rule 
in India, if not, then was the original pretence of danger false. 
He tells us that ' * this eventful chapter in the history of British 
India has finally closed;" that in the enjoyment of "perfect 
tranquillity," of "glorious achievements," there is now "a fair 
field for the consideration of past attempts, and a temper favour- 
able for a calm judgment upon them." Here then, the reviewer 
is in direct contradiction with himself on that point, upon which 
everything else hinges. He is so in a manner which cannot be 
explained by fallacies of any description. He asserts that they 
did a certain thing in order that a certain danger might be pre- 
vented. The thing is not effected. He then speaks of the danger 
as having passed away. The danger then was a fiction. 

He goes on to say "the grand fallacy, of which the most 
unsparing use has been made by those who sought to damage the 
administration of Lord Auckland, has been to confound the 
disasters of Cabool, and the retreat from that city, with the policy 
of the original advance beyond the Indus." Whoever confounded 
the one with the other? Has this nation been severe in judging 
or careful to set down in equity ? Has there been a man in the 
House of Commons holding them responsible for either act or 
failure? Has the nation visited upon them vengeance for dis- 
aster? Have their opponents called them to account for their 
policy ? They have neither been held accountable for the one, 
nor questioned for the other. It is upon General Elphinstone, — 
it is upon Sir William Macnaghten, — it is upon the subordinates, 
— it is upon the military men or politicals in India, — it is upon 
mere details that attention has been fixed in as far as attention 
has been at all excited ; and no judgment has been falsified in 
respect to the policy of the AfFghan war because of the disaster 
at Cabool, for this simple reason, that no judgment at all has 
been intelligibly pronounced. This is, however, assumed as 
the pretext for rushing into details about the force employed in 
one year and another, about the acts of Generals Pollock and 
Nott, the narrative of Lieut. Eyre, the character and qualifi- 
cations of Sir Alexander Burnes, Col. Dennie, Sir Robert Sale, 
— about insurrections, cantonments, commissariat, sepoys, bala 
hissars, entrenched camps, until the reviewer succeeds in con- 
structing a labyrinth through which he leads his bewildered 
reader far away from the designs of the foreign power that 
menaced India and the able and wonderful measures by the 
failure of which those designs have been so triumphantly defeated. 

From the pages of military details that follow, there is but one 
word that I should select for comment, and that is the word " in- 
surrection" cpnstantly used to designate the acts of the Affghans. 
Hid we not march an army into their country, take by force of 



4 



arms but without the forms of war, their strong places, and 
beat them in the field? Did we not march into that country 
with their hereditary political and religious foes the Sikhs? 
Did we not then establish a government by means illegal and 
unjust, and having the external characters of foreign domination 
and of religious persecution ? Had we or have we not done these 
things! Is the reply doubtful? No. We did these things. 
Then we are the offenders — the AfFghans the aggrieved. There 
was no incentive that could have been aroused in the human 
breast, whether supplied by motives of honour, of patriotism, or 
of faith, which did not impose upon the AfFghans the duty of 
sacrificing their lives to destroy a despotism such as this. And 
it is to the men who have in the first instance, through unmerited 
respect for us, submitted to our approach, and who afterwards 
exposed their lives to regain their rights and their independence, 
that the word " insurrection" is applied by Britons. It is in 
the columns of the Edinburgh Review, the assertor heretofore of 
the rights not of nations only against foreign rule, but of people's 
liberties against internal despotism, that the withering epithet is 
applied of rebellion to patriotism, and of insurrection to inde- 
pendence. Nor is this surprising. It is but the corrupt fruit of 
the corrupt tree that we have planted. England, hitherto 
the assertor of the rights of nations, has become herself the 
invader, the spoiler, the oppressor, the destroyer. England, 
whose station and strength have been acquired in Europe by pre- 
venting others from interfering in the affairs of their neighbours, 
imposing monarchs or principles upon unwilling people, now 
has not only done this herself, but has taken the setting-up of a 
despot and the overthrowing of a people's rights as a pretext for 
cloaking from herself and from others an unjust, a bootless, and 
an injurious war. Are whig principles composed of lawless 
war, interference in the affairs of foreign states, setting up of 
despots ? No. Why then does the Edinburgh Review defend 
such things ? It is that certain men having done that which is 
evil endeavour to make their acts be regarded as a part of a sys- 
tem, as a tc policy," to be naturally assailed by their political 
opponents, and necessarily adopted by their political supporters. 
Thus in factious times may guilt disguise itself under the livery 
of faction, and make use of its instruments, its organs, and its 
hirelings. 

Thus the reviewer speaks of those who denounce these crimes 
as being influenced by the " malevolence of party." Would to 
God that the charge were true. Would to God that party 
feelings and party objects were still available as a means for ar- 
resting guilt. Would that there were a faction in England that 
had for its watchword the rights of nations or the honour of 
England. Would that there was a party in England who could 
be termed "malevolent" in the pursuit of justice, and "reckless" 
in the denunciation of crime ! But, alas ! the organs of both 
parties have been equally at the disposal of designing men. 



5 



Where was it that appeared the first defence of the late Govern- 
ment? In the Quarterly Review! That review was used, when 
the documents were first presented to Parliament, to pervert 
judgment — this (the Edinburgh) — when, for the first time, the 
subject comes before the House of Commons — is used to forestall 
discussion. 

But let us examine the position which the Reviewer labours to 
make out, that the disasters at Cabool were not to be charged 
upon the Indian Government, or upon the Ministry in England. 
He says, " Had the policy which dictated the occupation of 
Affghanistan been as wickedly ambitious as was ever exemplified 
in the case of any conqueror from Nimrod to Napoleon," it 
would be unjust that the Governor-General " should be respon- 
sible for the incapacity and mismanagement which could have 
led to the destruction of such a corps dJarmee as he had placed at 
Cabool." Who but the Governor-General of India and the 
Government at home could be held responsible for disasters de- 
clared by the Reviewer himself to have been brought about by a 
series of acts the most infatuated? The selection of fit men is 
as much a duty in high offices of State as the adoption of just 
measures. If men unqualified are appointed — if instructions 
insufficient are given — if it be not only that some order is incom- 
plete, or that some agent is inefficient— -but if it be that all the 
agents are unqualified, and all the orders absurd, all the measures 
disastrous, and treasure and lives, and station and character are 
sacrificed — surely responsibility lies somewhere, and it must lie 
there where power has been confided. What means responsibi- 
lity, if not liability to censure or to punishment for the misuse of 
the power that has been entrusted, not for the advantage of a 
man, but for the benefit of a people? But so fully has the Re- 
viewer measured the sense of this nation, that it is he himself that 
exposes these grounds of accusation, converting them into a ius- 
tification of the men who have brought these disasters upon us. 
Nor is this all. Upon the exposure of this chain of fatuity and 
mismanagement he rests the charge which he brings against who- 
ever impugns the conduct of the late Government of factious ob- 
jects, and malevolent intentions. 

The -Reviewer then proceeds to defend his friends by a novel 
process. The colour is darkened on the one, in order that the 
shade may be brightened upon the other. The weights are 
transferred from one part of the scale to another, to make out the 
load to be less. The Government at home is not to be responsible 
for sending out a Governor-General unfit to select agents; but 
it is to be responsible for having compelled Lord Auckland to 
select unfit ones. This may appear very dangerous ground to 
those who do not understand its real object. Lord Auckland is 
the victim in England, after being the instrument in India. He 
must be prevented now from being a witness, and perhaps an 
accuser. He has to be contaminated and crushed bv beino- 



6 



defended, and his defence is generously made at the expense 
of others. He lias to be made to bear the responsibility of their 
real guilt by their assuming to bear upon their shoulders a portion 
of the charge of his incompetency. But, as it here stands, the ad- 
vocate of the Whig Administration rests that Administration's 
defence on Lord Auckland's being placed by the Government at 
home in the inability to select fit agents. This might be supposed 
to be an extravagance thrown out merely to bewilder, it is, how- 
ever, a truth, and a bewildering one. It is for those who have 
come to see in the results in India the ends only which the pro- 
jector of them had desired— to understand how he, that pulled 
the strings of the various puppets in the Board of Control and in 
the Indian government, took care that Lord Auckland (himself 
selected with reference to the same purpose) should be led to use 
his judgment, so as to advance those ends, and debarred from 
using his judgment in such a manner as to frustrate them.* 

The reviewer of " ministerial misrepresentations regarding the 
East" thus proceeds: '< The second misrepresentation is that 
Shah Shoojah was hateful to and despised by the people whom we 
took him bach to rule." The charge is, that the setting up of 
Shah Shoojah was a "crime" and a "folly" that was what 
had to be answered. But let us deal with the mere assertion 
here pretended to be believed and defended, namely, that Shah 
Shoojah was popular. Had he been popular, would he have 
required our army ? Had he been popular our support must 
have rendered him unpopular. " The race of Suddozeys," says 
the Reviewer, " was regarded as sacred as well as royal." Had 
it been so Shah Shoojah must have ceased to be " sacred'' in the 
eyes of Mussulmans when surrounded by a Sikh guard — Shah 
Shoojah ceased to be u royal" in the eyes of the Affghans when 
supported by a foreign army. Had Shah Shoojah been worthy 
to rule, he must have rejected power upon the conditions on 
which we offered it. "We exhibited him to the world and to his 
people as a traitor and a renegade ; and it is after a British army 
has been sacrificed for this phantom ofsacredness and this puppet 
of royalty— after universal desolation has been the result of our 
projects of policy, and our professions of philanthropy, that the 
defence of these atrocities is based upon the popularity of the 
man who, after being made the instrument of this guilt, has 
perished as its victim. The popularity of Shah Shoojah which is 
here asserted, if true, would be matter of deep aggravation of the 
guilt of the plotters of these acts. But this assertion of the popu- 
larity of Shah Shoojah is a miserable falsehood. See how it is 
supported. <c Theplainfact," says the Reviewer, " as established 

* The sense conveyed in the text is that every measure was concerted between 
the late Foreign Secretary and Russia ; if there has been treason, it has been 
universal in its operation, complete in its conduct, and perfect in its details. 



7 



by the testimony of Sir John M'Neill, Mr. Ellis, Mr. Mason, 
Captain Conolly, and others, is that the family of the Suddozeys, 
of which Shah Shoojah was the fittest representative, has always 
been respected and beloved by the dominant tribes of Affgha- 
nistan." Those who spoke of Shah Shoojah's unpopularity spoke 
of the man, not of the family. It is accidentally, no doubt, that 
the reviewer controverts the statement regarding the man by ad- 
ducing testimony regarding the family ! Can it be by mistake 
that he speaks of the family being always respected and beloved, 
after 30 years of exile of this its fittest representative — after two 
expulsions of that representative, and his final assassination ? Here 
a witness is called in for the defence, and he establishes, by preva- 
rication, the case for the prosecution. 

But let us look for a moment at the case. Lord Auckland 
told us that we were to invade Affghanistan for the purpose of 
" substituting a friendly for an unfriendly power/' Have we 
done this? In what condition did Lord Auckland leave the 
patient he undertook to treat? Did he leave him restored in 
health, cured of his disorder, justifying his diagnosis of disease — 
and his mode of the treatment ? No. Writhing under the dis- 
order. The country Lord Auckland undertook to benefit he has 
left in desolation — the country he undertook to treat for un- 
friendliness, he has filled with abhorrence. 

Let us suppose that there was danger to India from Russia- 
let us suppose that there being such danger, England was to take 
as regarded Russia, no measures of precaution or defence — what, 
then, would have to be done on this special Asiatic field 1 The 
Affghan country was divided into various principalities. The rule 
of the leaders, by the reviewer's statement, was little more than 
"nominal." No power was possessed by any one sufficient to ren- 
der it available for any foreign purpose of aggression. They were 
divided between themselves, and incapable of common action for a 
common purpose. They were a people that could be united only by 
danger approaching their frontiers, and that occasion would have 
presented itself if ever Russia appeared as an invader. What 
better barrier could have been presented for our Indian empire ? 
This state of things, as positively set down by Sir William 
M'Naghten, and by Sir Alexander Burnes, was the most favour- 
able that could be devised for our defence. You enter that coun- 
try, and you say that you do so for the purpose of giving it a 
strong and united government. Had you succeeded in uniting 
the tribes under one head, and the nation under one chief, you 
would have brought about a state of things exactly the reverse of 
that judged most favourable for our defence — one in which the 
thought of ambition would have arisen in the minds of the former 
conquerors of India, in which the chief of these turbulent and 
warlike tribes might have looked to foreign conquest as a means 
of maintaining internal supremacy — one in which power would 
be given to that chief to efface the natural difficulties and barriers 
which the country presented to an invading foe — one in which 



6 



diplomatic influences would come to exercise in the middle of 
Central Asia that fatal power in that fatal direction which has 
been so signally exemplified in Persia. Had you made Shah 
Shoojah the monarch of Afghanistan, and had you reduced the 
various provinces of that country under his sway, you would 
have prepared for Russia the realization in this century of the 
project of Peter in the beginning of the last, when a concert was 
established between the Affghans and the dependant monarch of 
the Persians and himself for the overthrow of our predecessors in 
India, the Moguls. What I here state was asserted in the House 
of Commons by a Director of the East India Company, in reply 
to Sir John Hobhouse in the debate on Mr. Baillie's motion, and 
his statement met with no attempt even at refutation. He then 
told the Government that if they had succeeded in doing what 
they attempted to do, they would have converted a state of 
things on the frontiers of India, most favourable to our defence, 
into a state of things most favourable for an attack upon us. 
Had England erected one central power in Affghanistan, by the 
mere expression of a wish and the exercise of benevolent and 
pecuniary means, which it was in her power to have done, she 
would have been playing the Russian game — she would have 
been but setting up in Cabool a counterpart to Mahommed Shah ; 
but proceeding as she has done, by treacherous assault in the 
first instance, and merciless devastation in the last, by adding 
the exasperation of religious fanaticism to the animosities of 
political hatred, she has far more deeply and extensively broken 
up for Russia soils still virgin to European diplomacy, and has 
sown for herself a harvest of dragons'-teeth whence will spring 
hordes of armed foes and of fanatic avengers, to serve as the 
van of a Muscovite invasion. Nor — unless Britain shake off her 
lethargy, detect, and punish her enemies within, will that " event- 
ful chapter" of " glorious achievements" be iC finally closed'' 
until it record the fall of the British dominion in India, and 
the desolation of the Hindoo race, our dutiful and betrayed sub- 
jects. 



I remain, Sir, &c. 



9 



LETTER II. 

DOST MAHOMED FRIENDLY TO ENGLAND — LORD 
PALMERSTON TO RUSSIA. 

Sir, — The Edinburgh reviewer, in proceeding in his exposition 
of "ministerial misrepresentations," comes now to the third in 
order. He states it to be this : — 

" That Dost Mahomed, the Sovereign de facto of Affghanistan, was all along 
willing to enter into an exclusive alliance with us, such as would have effectually 
shut out Persian and Russian influence, and saved us the hazard of a military 
occupation of those countries ; and that all the price he asked us to pay for 
these great benefits was that we should compel or persuade Runjeet Singh to 
restore Peshawur and its dependencies, of which that monarch had unjustly 
despoiled him." 

He adds— 

" Not a word of this plausible story is true." 
I answer: — Every word of the "misrepresentation" is a fa- 
brication. Who ever asserted that Dost Mahomed ivas Sove- 
reign of Affghanistan? Who asserted that he was all along 
willing to enter into an exclusive alliance with us ? Who as- 
serted that his alliance would have destroyed a Russian influence 
in the provinces bordering on the Indus ? Who has asserted 
that his alliance would have saved us from the hazard of a 
military occupation ? And what means the introduction of the 
" price" that was to be paid for benefits that were not recog- 
nised as such ? No one has asserted any of these things ; but 
having put these absurdities in the mouth of those whom he 
points out as the maligners of the " wisdom'' of the late Admi- 
nistration, the reviewer triumphs over his imaginary adversaries, 
and exclaims — " not a word of this plausible story is true." He 
proceeds, " Dost Mahomed was never Sovereign de facto of 
Affghanistan ; he was never ruler, under any form or title, of 
Peshawur, of which, in truth, he demanded not the restoration 
but the gift. * * He spurned our offer of guaranteeing to 
him the secure enjoyment of his actual position, and threw 
himself into the arms of those who promised him, indeed, all 
that he asked, but who were utterly unable to gratify his am- 
bition or even to protect him against our just displeasure." 

What in this mob of these shades of fallacies is intended to 
be insinuated, is that Dost Mahomed, of Cabool, was a very 
dangerous and designing man, that there were very substantial 
reasons for getting him out of the way ; and that to represent him 
as a useful agent or a peaceable character was only a political 
trick of party opponents. To show the dishonesty of this 
wretched "plausible story," put in the mouth of fictitious 



10 



antagonists, it may be worth while to state what the real an- 
tagonists did and did not allege. They did not allege that Dost 
Mahomed was ruler of Afghanistan, having been instructed by 
the diplomatic correspondence not only in the geography of 
Cabool but also in the name of its ruler ; they did not allege 
that he was " all along" willing to enter into an exclusive 
alliance with England, but they did allege that England's acts to- 
wards him were such as must have disgusted and alienated the 
most fervent partisan; they did not allege that his alliance 
would have destroyed Russian influence, but they did allege 
that then no such influence had existence; they did not allege 
that his alliance would have saved us from the hazard of a mili- 
tary occupation, but they did allege that for that occupation no 
cause whatever had been assigned, and no case made out. 

It is false that Dost Mahomed demanded the gift of Peshawur. 
The Indian Government did indeed offer, upon certain condi- 
tions, to obtain the restoration of it to the Affghans ; but this offer 
Dost Mahomed refused, alleging that its restoration upon such 
terms as they proposed would be more injurious than its reten- 
tion ; and he added thereto the expression of a hope that the 
English Government were not seeking, " under the pretence of 
friendliness, to destroy him." It is false that the Indian Govern- 
ment ever offered to guarantee to him the " secure enjoyment of 
his actual position." It is false that u he threw himself into the 
arms" of any other power ; and this falsehood is proved by the 
most positive declaration on the part of official men, and the value 
of their declarations is enhanced by this — that they were fraudu- 
lently suppressed by the Government when the papers were pre- 
sented to Parliament. 

But had Dost Mahomed bargained for the friendship of Eng- 
land, and rejected the price that England thought proper 
to offer, he was quite in the right to do so ; for to use the words 
of Mr. Tucker, " Unless we chose to negotiate upon the condi- 
tions which Dost Mahomed proposed, what business had we at 
Cabool ?" Had Dost Mahomed thrown himself into the arms of 
Russia or Persia, it was but the natural consequence of our acts, 
and then it would have been the part of the British Parliament 
to call this Government to account for having driven him into 
the danger, and deprived England of this Ally. 

There is but one reason alleged why we had invaded Affgha- 
nistan, and one only justification of the war offered, and that 
is the unfriendliness of Dost Mahomed. Our only object, was to 
construct a chief of Cabool, who should be friendly. This pow- 
erless chief of a single remote city in the wilds of Asia is the only 
person or thing that has to be considered, and in him the only 
thing that has to be considered is a certain bias. His acts we 
are not to look to — his necessities, his power, are nothing to us ; 
his brother chiefs of Candabar, the whole population of Affghani- 
stan, are nothing to the English Government ! All the power of 



II 



the English Government itself is of no value, except in as far as 
it could influence this peculiar bias in the mind of this Ca- 
boolee. Russia and Persia could be touched by no act, influenced 
by no motives, controlled by no measures, except those that are 
to act upon them through the mental operations and conceptions 
of this mysterious Affghan. To support India against the for- 
midable league of these mighty powers, Persia and Russia, 
whether by diplomacy or by warlike means, England has no 
power whatever, except in as far as she can influence the state of 
mind of the chief of a city, the name of which at the time that all 
these operations were in progress was scarcely known in England, 
save as a geographic fact. We are told all this after the prince 
we have set up has fallen a sacrifice, and the unfriendly one has 
by ourselves been sent back to rule, and to brood over the deso- 
lation of his country, and to vow vengeance amid the ruins and 
ashes of Cabool ! Englishmen are to believe all this — that is, 
are to believe that we had such idiots for rulers, that they be- 
lieved all this ? 

After a war to upset the prince of a friendly people and to 
place another upon the throne, and when the result of that war 
has been the assassination of the prince we have set up, the de- 
struction of our army, and the restoration of the prince we had 
expelled, a philosophical review comes forward to advocate the 
" policy" and to congratulate the country upon the smallness of 
the cost at which this "wisdom" has been enacted in the eyes of a 
wondering world ! This is a fact of undying interest, it is a curi- 
osity in the history of the human species, it is a phenomenon such 
as never before presented itself— it is, as it were, the sublimation 
of enlightenment and of constitutional freedom. Through the 
first, men have now become so immersed in profound lucubra- 
tions that all worldly care has disappeared from amongst them ; 
by the second, the sense of the responsibility of governors is so 
complete that the very idea of the possibility of error or of 
crime is effaced from the public mind. The consequence of 
this wonderful progress in letters and in government is, that who- 
ever gets possession of power can do what he pleases, and who- 
ever has the faculty of appearing in print as the organ of a 
party can write what he likes. 

But reverting to the question before me, I am bound to consider 
it, (in deference to the British nation,) as a matter which men of 
business had to conduct, as an enterprise which a Government 
had undertaken, and therefore as one for which we must find 
reasons or suppose motives, we must connect effects with causes 
assigned, or anticipate the existence of causes unexplained, where 
results necessarily flowing from such are before us. Seeing that 
the friendliness or unfriendliness of Dost Mahomed to the British 
nation was a matter in their minds of such paramount import- 
ance that it influenced the position of England throughout the 
globe, we must suppose that judgment the most scrutinising, had 



12 



been exercised, in the first instance, to ascertain whether he was 
friendly or not, and that exertions the most strenuous must have 
been made in the second to regain his friendliness before un- 
dertaking to move armies to strike him down. What then are 
we to say if we find evidence neither of the one or the other. If 
we find that he was friendly and was treated as any enemy — if 
we find that he was treated as an enemy in face of the completest 
evidence of his friendliness, and that that evidence was suppressed 
in presenting the case to Parliament? What can we say, save 
that the British Government was engaged in a conspiracy ? 
Supposing that it were just and lawful to upset Dost Mahomed 
because he was unfriendl}', would men who desired what they 
professed to seek, proceed to execute sentence against him, before 
they had exerted and exhausted every effort to regain him, not 
only by conciliation, but by menace ? Would they have struck him 
before attempting to influence him by the display of the terrors 
which England had decided to employ ? 

The Edinburgh reviewer in making out his case has to inform 
us of the means taken to ascertain Dost Mahomed's disposition, 
and of the efforts made to change it. He however does not do 
so. He merely assumes that it is a " ministerial misrepresenta- 
tion," to say that Dost Mahomed was friendly to England, but 
alleges nothing in proof of the falsehood of the misrepresenta- 
tion. He leaves the word " misrepresentation" without any 
support except that of a bundle of words, which he is justified 
by the past in expecting to pass current among a nation that has 
lost the habit of calling Ministers to account for crimes, or 
reviewers for fallacies. Yet is this attempted apology a deeper 
homage of guilt to honesty than the honesty of our times 
demands. They are content to be ignorant, where ignorance in 
a citizen equals in guilt that of any act which a Government can 
commit. 

If it be a misrepresentation that Dost Mahomed was friendly 
to England this could arise only in consequence of the suppres- 
sion of the evidence upon which the Government had come to 
the other conclusion. Any misrepresentation upon this head is 
not the misfortune but the sin of the late Ministry if they are 
right, and the first step to their detection and punishment if 
they are wrong. 

Against the reviewer's insinuations, I will place the following 
assertions : — 

I assert that Dost Mahomed was friendly to England. 

I assert that, if Dost Mahomed had been unfriendly, there 
could be no danger to England from his ill-will. 

I assert that there was neither power nor influence of Persia or 
of Russia whatever exerted, or capable of exertion, in Central 
Asia — up to the date of our invasion. 

I — the denouncer of Russia, the man accused of being the origi- 
nator of the Affghan war through inspiring a fallacious dread of 



18 



Russian power — assert, as I have long ago asserted, that there 
was no danger from Russia in Central Asia, except through the 
influence which Russia had obtained over the late Cabinet of 
Great Britain. 

I assert that her pitiable missions to Kandahar and Cabool 
were arranged in order merely to furnish the pretext in the first 
instance, and the justification in the second, of that expedition 
across the Indus, which no man in his senses could fail to see, was 
designed for the end which it has brought about — the destruction 
of the third harrier that resisted Russia's progress and 'protected 
India's integrity. 

I assert that, in furtherance of this design, a British Minister 
endeavoured to make Dost Mahomed a foe, and to drive him 
into the arms of Persia and of Russia. 

I assert that that Minister failed to do so, and then falsely 
represented him as England's enemy and as Russia's friend. 

I assert that fraudulent documeuts were presented to Parlia- 
ment in the name of the Sovereign to cover these transactions, 
wounding as deeply the constitution within as the power of Eng- 
land without. 

I further assert that, had all the alleged charges against Dost 
Mahomed been true, they constituted no ground for war ; and if 
the alleged influence of Russia were true, they constituted grounds 
for protecting Dost Mahomed against Russia, and not for attack- 
ing him. They would be grounds of war with Russia, and not 
grounds of war with others and of satisfaction with Russia. 

I assert that, had there been just cause of war against Dost 
Mahomed, that war was unjust because of the illegal mode 
in which it was made; and that if there had been just cause 
of war against the Affghan state, and if that war had been 
legally entered into and prosecuted, to have set up a pretender 
would have been an act heinous and revolting — heinous in the 
eye of the law of nations— revolting to a race of freemen. 

I finally assert, that, had all the former steps been just as they 
were unjust, and intelligent as they w T ere idiotic, (as accounted 
for) down even to the last of setting up of Shah Shoojah — that 
the stealthiness of our approach and the insidiousness of our 
words must have destroyed in this nation, who had accepted 
them, the common characters of honesty and bravery. 

These are no new assertions. Whoever defended this war had 
to meet and rebut them. Where have they been grappled with — 
where have they been touched ? 

These are charges advanced by me long before evidence was 
within reach. We are now in possession of evidence to substan- 
tiate them—evidence strangely and mysteriously brought to light, 
although as yet no tribunal has been raised, no accused brought 
before its bar, no means taken to lay bare hidden transactions, to 
search out testimony, and to bring forth witnesses. 

Is there an individual in England, however humble his station, 



14 



who does not know that the very agents of the Government itself 
have repudiated that Government's acts, and that its statements 
of the motives upon which it acted, when they became known to 
the official personages who compiled the documents which they 
submitted, drew forth a cry of abhorrence. Having already pro- 
nounced the Government's acts unjust and preposterous, they now 
applied to the exposition of the case of them the withering terms 
" trickery," and " fraud." 

A case for inquiry indeed ! There is nothing further to in- 
quire into — the whole case is before us, and there is no scrutiny 
that can render the crime more black, the perpetrators more 
criminal, or the nation that has submitted to it more guilty or 
contemptible. 

And, to complete the case, we have here a laboured defence, 
coming out in the most authoritative manner, known to be con- 
cocted with the utmost care, and the employment of all the means 
at the disposal of the accused, in which there is not made out a 
shadow of a defence, and which heaps cumulatively inferential 
proof upon the direct proof already before the public in the bad 
faith and in the fraud which appears in every sentence. To the 
recognised fraud of the papers presented to Parliament comes 
now to be added utter inability to make out any case, and dis- 
honest avoidance of the charges made. Surely we are not yet 
so sunk that members of Parliament will not see that this is a 
matter that touches them and into which they have to inquire. 

Let me examine for a moment the nature of the alleged crime 
against Dost Mahomed. In proceedings of a legal kind (and all 
proceedings between nations are in the highest sense of a legal 
kind) you can have no such thing as an indistinct term or an in- 
definite crime. The crime must be known, and the expression 
designating it must be clear. If human life be lost we under- 
stand the act, and it is inquired into before a tribunal, the 
allegation being made of "wilful murder" or of "homi- 
cide." If property be unjustly detained or forcibly seized, the 
act is understood and known to be criminal, and proceedings are 
taken upon the allegation of robbery , or fraud, or breach of trust. 
Without the allegation of an act in itself criminal there can be 
no proceedings, and the criminal act must be specified by a 
legally recognised term. The law inquires in order that it may 
punish, and without there being the allegation of a punishable act 
there can be no proceedings. So in the relations between states — 
although they have no tribunal to which they can in common 
appeal, they proceed according to the laws of each state, and to 
the common law of nations, as if they brought before a higher 
tribunal the allegation of a crime and the demand of justice upon 
the criminal, and that tribunal to which a nation so appeals is the 
common sense of justice in the breasts of all men, and the com- 
mon obligations of law implanted by itself in its own constitu- 
tion. When a nation alleges anything against another it must be 



15 



something recognised as criminal by the law of nations. If not, 
the very absence of an intelligible charge is proof of innocence 
in the accused, and of guilt in the accuser. It must not be a 
state of mind, but an act or the intention to act ; intention 
justified by the possession of means and by the presence of danger, 
and a nation can finally proceed to the use of the means within 
its power to do itself justice or to save itself from being injured — 
namely, reprisals, or war — only by certain fixed and unalterable 
forms which impose the exhaustion of every means to obtain 
reparation from the state by which it has been aggrieved, and 
by a final communication of its decision to have recourse to arms. 
Was there in respect to the AfFghans such proceeding on the part 
of England ? Did England declare itself to be the sufferer from 
any act recognised by the law of nations as criminal on the part 
of the Affghans? Had the AfFghans seized British property, 
violated British rights, infringed treaties with Britain ? Had 
they engaged in a confederacy with a state in open warfare with 
England? Had they menaced our frontier, or had England 
alleged that they had done any of these things ? Nothing of the 
kind was or is pretended. There was, therefore, no possibility of 
taking proceedings. No, but something not criminal was insi- 
nuated against them afterwards. The case then is proven — the 
Affghans were not guilty, but the English Government was guilty. 

Could it further be alleged that there was a possibility on the 
part of the Affghans of doing any of these things ? They were 
not a people having diplomatic relations, so as to place themselves 
in a doubtful position in regard to England ; there was no state 
in the world with which England was at war, consequently no 
alliance of theirs could be a hostile act against England ; they 
had not the physical means of injuring England ; there was 
not a possibility of their encroaching on our frontier, since we 
were not even neighbours. There was, therefore, at once no 
international crime insinuated by England against the Affghans, 
and there was no possibility of their committing any. 

The formalities of war are not imposed upon a nation that is 
attacked ; it becomes the legal enemy of whoever attacks it by 
the fact of attack. But not so the state that proceeds to assail 
another. Unless it specify to its own subjects the grievances 
which make war necessary by them — unless it shew to the nation 
whom it assails, the guilt which they or their rulers have com- 
mitted, and which has imposed this necessity — unless it establish 
before the tribunal of the world's judgment the justice of its 
cause, it must be, and must appear to be, and it is constituted by 
the Law of Nations, not an enemy, but a robber. The whole in- 
dividuals who compose such state, with the exception only of 
those, (if there be such) who reprobate and attempt to arrest such 
crimes, become, whether they know it or not, pirates and buc- 
caneers. 

When nations have rushed into unlawful and unjust war, it 



10 



has only been when a despotic monarch coerced an unwilling 
people, or when a people inspired with the lust of conquest 
yielded itself up to the guidance of unbridled passion. In the 
present case, however, there is nothing of the kind— there is no 
despotic monarch that has coerced us, there is no passion of a 
nation that has converted its rulers into mere instruments of guilt ; 
there is no power which has enforced this crime, nor impulse 
which has constrained it. The agency is disguised — the reason 
is unassigned — to this very hour the author is unknown. Why a 
free people have committed murder they do not know. Who 
has ordered it, they do not know. After the completion of the 
tragedy, the nation is left without the faculty of fathoming its 
motives, or the courage to avow that it has done so. To obtain 
the use of this nation's power it was quite enough to keep them in 
ignorance of the intention. To screen themselves from punish- 
ment, and the nation from a sense of its guilt — it is enough for 
the guilty to spread vile and worthless calumny, and slander 
against their victims — conscious that this nation has just enough 
of shame left to adopt a lie to conceal its servitude. 

If friendliness of Dost Mahomed to Russia were a crime 
against England, (and it must be a crime, since we had reason 
to punish it), what is England herself? Had Dost Mahomed 
been friendly to Russia, he would only be imitating the example 
set him by the British Government. The British Government 
proclaims, " I am the friend of Russia, and whoever is the friend 
of Russia is opposed to me." " England and Russia are united ; 
they are united to maintain the peace of the world." They 
avowedly concert their despatches, and as the result of this con- 
cert, Persia is brought under the domination of Russia + Eng- 
land! England says to Dost Mahomed, ' 'You must receive the 
agent of Russia — we are on friendly terms with Russia and 
presently she says to him, " We shall destroy you, because you 
are the friend of Russia." 

The English Government at once displays the utmost anxiety 
to advance the designs of Russia, and the utmost abhorrence of 
whoever could be associated with Russia, overstepping all limits 
of law, right, constitutional check and prudence, first to confer on 
Russia the power and influence of her co-operation, and then to 
destroy those who in morbid fear she falsely assumes to be friends 
of Russia. You pronounce the sentence of dethronement, and 
consequently of death, upon a prince over whom you have no 
control, because, says Sir J. McNeill, "a lieutenant of Cossacks, 
without pomp or retinue, has ridden up to Cabool and your 
Minister in Downing-street is the while holding prolonged confi- 
dential intercourse with the representative of Russia herself. 
You pretend to fear a Russian lieutenant at Cabool, and you have 
no fear for a Russian Ambassador in London. Who can 
explain this riddle. The English Minister pretends hostility 
between the Governments of England and Russia, when these 



"1? 



two Governments perfectly understand each other, and uses that 
pretence for destroying a foreign prince, who was friendly to 
England and not to Russia— and falsifies documents to make it 
be believed that he was friendly to Russia ! 

* This allegation of friendliness of Dost Mahomed to Russia, 
does not stand alone, the same thing has been alleged against the 
Minister of England. 

That which is alleged against Dost Mahomed, if true, was no 
crime, but that which is alleged against the British Minister, if 
true, is a crime. 

The accusation against Dost Mahomed is alleged only after 
you have passed sentence and executed it upon him, 

The charge against the ex- Minister of Great Britain was made 
before the occurrence of these transactions, which confirm it, and, 
are only intelligible in its reality. 

The two charges are indissolubly connected. The charge against 
Dost Mahomed is, if true, the disproof of the allegation against 
the British Minister; if false, its confirmation. The present act is 
salient and vehement. There is here system, there is here rapidity 
of execution ; it is for one only o f two most opposite purposes — 
either to crush in its inception and to arrest at its source the influ- 
ence of a power judged to be dangerous to this country, or to serve 
the ends of that same power. 

By an investigation then into the grounds upon which the Bri- 
tish Minister acted in respect to Dost Mahomed, will we also 
ascertain whether or not we have had during ten years the agent of 
a foreign Cabinet directing our councils, ruining our affairs, de- 
grading our character, and destroying alike our honesty and our 
sense. 

I have dwelt thus at length upon this third assumed " misre- 
presentation," as it constitutes the whole case of the late Govern- 
ment, but wish to reserve the faculty of adducing, from official 
evidence, the proof of what I here assert. 

I remain, Sir, &c. 



* The passages in italics were suppressed by the Morning Herald, and 
printed subsequently in that paper as an Advertisement. 

C 



LETTER III. 



OFFICIAL EVIDENCE OF THE FALSEHOOD OF 
THE PRETEXTS FOR THE AVAR. 



Sir, — I now proceed to adduce testimony in support of the 
allegations contained in my last letter. But before doing so there 
is a preliminary consideration which I must offer, 

There can be no direct evidence that can criminate in a 
higher degree than secrecy itself. A Government is not a 
principal, but an agent. It is the agent for the nation, accord- 
ing to the law and in obedience to the Crown. The acts are 
matters which concern the citizens of free states. These citizens 
have a right to know ; but what is more, it is their duty to know 
whether or not they are lawfully engaged in killing and destroying 
their fellow-creatures — whether or not their fellow-creatures are 
justly punished, against whom sentence of death is executed by 
themselves. 

However negligent of their duties the citizens of a free state 
may become, it is the part of Ministers, if they are honest, to 
perform their own ; and however little the Parliament or the 
nation might care to inquire into the causes of war with a foreign 
state, or however little they might seek to enforce the obligations 
which the law imposes upon the British Crown, the Minister who 
involves the nation in an unjust war is equally criminal as the 
free citizens would be, who, if the Government had involved them 
in a war that was just, neglected to ascertain that it was so. 
There can be, therefore, no discovery to make that can augment 
the guilt of this war, beyond the measure of the already known 
and established crime. If we found evidence under the hand of 
the highest officers, of a detailed process enjoined to exasperate 
Dost Mahomed, in order that he might be led to evince symptoms 
of animosity to England — if we had evidence of an adjustment 
between the English Minister and the Russian Minister at St. 
Petersburg, detailing the process by which the British power was 
to be used by Russia in Persia to drive it upon Herat, we could 
obtain evidence of no crime blacker or more dangerous than that 
of which we have knowledge — namely, that the British nation 
has been driven into an unjust war against a people who never 
offended it ; and if we heed not the first crime that we do know, 
how shall we heed the other crime which we have not yet dis- 
covered ? 

But it is not merely that secrecy was criminal, but that publicity 
was requisite. A Government arms its nation against the hostile 



19 



proceedings of a foreign Government, and conceals that hostility ! 
— Notwithstanding the obstructions thrown in the way, we are 
in possession of a series of those providential revelations, which 
seem to pursue the shedding of innocent blood, whether perpe- 
trated by one man or by many ; and I shall proceed to arrange 
under six heads the points upon which that evidence bears, in 
support of charges made before such testimony appeared, and be- 
fore the catastrophe had occurred : — 

1. That Dost Mahomed was friendly to England. 

2. That the Indian Government knew that he was so. 

3. That had he been unfriendly to us, he was not friendly to the 
Russians or the Persians. 

4. That Persia and Russia had no influence in Afghanistan. 

5. That with the Indian Government did not originate the 
design of setting up Shah Soojah, or of overthrowing Dost Ma- 
homed. 

6. That every alleged ground of apprehension as connected 
with other powers — namely, the invasion of Herat, the influence 
of Russia at the court of Tehran, differences between Great Bri- 
tain and Russia, had entirely disappeared, or had been satisfactorily 
adjusted many months before our troops entered Afghanistan. 

1. Dost Mahomed was friendly to England. 

This chief had raised himself to pre-eminence among the people 
by his talents and character, but he ruled as an eastern patriarch, 
not as a European monarch. He had no prescriptive rights — no 
hereditary title, — there were no bureaucratic chains, fettering a 
people's will — no fixed and settled habits of government, enabling 
him to act without the knowledge of those he ruled, enabling him 
to carry out designs of his own, against their interests or their 
inclinations, concealing from them what he did until it was too 
late to prevent it, concealing from them what he made them to do, 
until he moulded their thoughts by the very acts which they had 
performed. Dost Mahomed had no Cabinet. He was a Monarch. 
The Affghans had no Parliament. They did understand their 
affairs. 

The Affghans are politically and religiously the enemies of the 
Persians, hating and despising them. Russia was to them some 
maleficent but remote agency, which it had never entered into 
their minds to think of as connected with their own circum- 
stances, or the circumstances of the people around them, until they 
heard of her as united to their natural enemies — the Persians, 
They 'knew at the same time that the Russians were the enemies 
of England, so that danger approaching them from that quarter 
would, they expected, call forth protection and support for them- 
selves in the powerful arms of Britain. 

This people oppressed on the one side by the Sikhs, animated 
with bitter hatred against the Persians, and, in as far as they 
thought of Russia, looking upon her as an enemy if only because 
connected with the Persians — beheld around them dangers only, 

c 2 



20 



and towards every neighbour were moved by feelings only of 
hatred or of fear. To the British Government in India their 
eyes naturally turned as to their protector in case of danger from 
any quarter, and especially from Persia or Russia, knowing that 
these openly asserted the design of invading India. Their confi- 
dence in England had been partly estranged by seeing the Eng- 
lish associated with the Sikhs, and they repeatedly and earnestly 
endeavoured to detach the English from this false and degrading 
alliance. 

In 1834 the mission of Sir A. (then Captain) Burnes excited 
amongst them feelings of pride and exultation, as well as of hope. 
They then indeed had no fear of Persia, but they looked to 
security from Sikh aggression. 

Such was the sense of the people of whom Dost Mahomed was 
the chief ruler. In addition to these impulses, common to him as 
them, he, as their ruler, derived importance from any communi- 
cation made to him from so great a government as that of British 
India. So clear and simple is this position, that it must appear 
futile to adduce proof of it, and the onus of proof must lie upon 
those who assert the reverse. 

The person selected as the envoy of England, had published a 
work, in which he spoke of Dost Mahomed in terms of the 
highest enthusiasm, and in which he detailed the devotion of him- 
self and of his people to England. The same envoy — his views 
being adopted, and his acts commended — was again sent back 
upon a more important mission. The subject of negotiation 
between him and Dost Mahomed, in 1837-8, was the supporting of 
Herat, then assailed by the Persians, or of uniting- Afghanistan 
for defence in case Herat should fall. There was a simultaneous 
application from Dost Mahomed to England for support, and pro- 
posals from England to Dost Mahomed for co-operation. Nothing 
again could be simpler and clearer than this position — England, 
as in 1809, required the support of the Affghans to defend her 
frontier (but here it is to be observed, that it was she herself that 
had given to Russia the power of pushing Persia upon Herat — 
it was she herself that had made Persia the dependent of Russia, 
and Russia the arbitress of Persia, and though this cause existed 
in the beginning of 1838, it had ceased to exist in 1839, when our 
troops marched) ; and Dost Mahomed apprehending in the fall 
of Herat the advance of an enemy into the very heart of his 
country was at once prepared to offer his zealous co-operation to 
England for her defence while soliciting the protection of England 
for his own, at the same time deprecated the alliance of England 
with the Sikhs, and required in the first instance, but supplicated 
only in the last, the intervention of the British Government — for 
such an arrangement in respect to Peshawur as should settle 
temporarily at least, the differences between the Sikhs and the 
j^ffghans, and leave him free to turn his force to the westward. 

In the meantime a Russian agent appears at Cabool, and that 
opportunity is seized by Dost Mahomed to bring into evidence 



21 



his complete devotion to England. He transferred to the English 
envoy that agent's papers ; received him only at the envoy's 
request; and offered in the directest manner to place for ever a 
feud of blood between himself and Russia, if the English Govern- 
ment required it, by causing the agent to be killed. This most 
extraordinary evidence of the alarm at that time in the minds of 
the Affghans, and of their readiness to perpetrate any crime to 
secure the co-operation of England, is shadowed forth in those 
portions of Sir A. Burnes's despatches that, after being suppressed 
by the Government, have seen the light, and it is known to me 
from other sources. 

The result of this negotiation was that Sir A. Burnes left 
Cabool, and that the Governor- General proclaimed Dost Maho- 
med to be unfriendly to England. He further denounced him 
as entertaining views of ambition dangerous to the British 
frontiers ; as attacking the ally of England, the Sikhs; and as, 
therefore, being obnoxious to the vengeance of the British power! 
And, after these allegations, an army crossed the Indus, accom- 
panied by Sikh battalions, and an Affghan pretender. 

The correspondence of Sir A. Burnes was then presented to 
the British Parliament, as explanatory of the ivar (?). Sir A. 
Burnes, on seeeing the documents thus presented, took means to 
have the suppressed portions of his despatches sent to this country, 
where they have since appeared, by which we ascertain that 
omission had been made of those portions which proved the 
friendliness of Dost Mahomed, to England I The now completed 
official documents exhibited in detail the grounds of Sir A. 
Burnes's judgment, and shewed that Dost Mahomed, from every 
personal and public consideration, from his interests as a prince, 
his feelings as a man, and his necessities as a precarious ruler of 
a free people, was bound up in an English alliance. These 
official documents show that an English alliance was for him a 
source of profit, honour, advantage, and security ; that the people 
over whom he ruled were filled with antipathy for every neigh- 
bour except England, and looked to England, by sympathies 
present and past, and to England alone, for protection against 
the dangers that menaced them alike from the east and from the 
west. These documents show that, notwithstanding these favour- 
able dispositions, and the mission to them of a man who had 
exposed to the world in the strongest manner his sense of the 
utility of that alliance, his sense of the friendliness of the people, 
his sense of the devotedness of its ruler, the British Government 
had cast them off — rejected not only their proposals for adjustment, 
but their supplications for protection. These documents exhibit 
the Affghans with bended knees and joined hands, naked, defence- 
less, meek, and imploring ; and the Protector, before whom they 
bow, reproaching them for hostile designs and perfidious alliance 
with her foes, and then dashing her mailed fist in the face of the 
unarmed suppliant ! Having perpetrated this dastardly crime, 
she then submits to her own people, and to the world, falsified 



22 



documents, cunningly devised deceit, to vilify the suppliant, 
she had trampled on as he kneeled — bruised and stabbed as he 
fell. When in the House of Commons the suppressions are 
hinted at, they are accounted for by saying that it was from 
regard to a foreign power that portions had been omitted. The 
suppressed portions were not offensive to Russia, shewing as they 
did that Russia had no power to injure us. The published por- 
tions, most offensive. 

One of the Indian directors, after perusing the mutilated cor- 
respondence, and upon the moment of perusing it, and before it 
could have entered into any man's mind to conceive that a 
Government of England had presented a case so diametrically 
opposed to the truth, recorded a formal protest in the India 
House, of which the following is an extract : — 

" But what was the conduct of Dost Mahomed throughout the 
whole of the negotiations with Sir A. Burnes? Most concilia- 
tory, as I think. Most frank, and even submissive. He solicited 
only two things, * * the first, that the English Government 
would interpose its good offices to obtain the restoration of 
Peshawur for Sultan Mahmoud ; the second, that the British 
Government should assist the Affghans with a military force or 
with money, to enable them to defend Candahar against the 
Persians. 

" Now, was there anything unreasonable in these requests ? 
Dost Mahomed shewed an evident preference for the British 
alliance ; but how were his overtures met by Sir A. Burnes? 
Did he come forward frankly and say how far the British Go- 
vernment would go in promoting these objects? No, his answers 
were petulant and evasive, and were in no way calculated to 
satisfy the minds of the Affghans. ... If Sir A. Burnes 
was not authorised to negotiate with the ruler of Cabool upon the 
basis of mutual advantage, why was he deputed to Affghanistan ? 
And would not Dost Mahomed, seeing that his propositions were 
evaded, have been justified in dealing with our agent as a spy, 
instead of treating him as he did, with the utmost generosity, 
confidence, and consideration? 

" Upon a careful review of the papers that have been printed, 
I am led to the conclusion that our conduct towards the ruler of 
Cabool has been most unjust as well as impolitic. . . . We 
have aggravated the Affghans, and furnished a strong motive for 
their uniting as one people against the British power in India. 
. . . It has not been established that Dost Mahomed 
entertained any hostile purpose towards our own govern- 
ment, and that chief moreover was absolutely powerless. 

ie Soojah-ool-Moolk moreover was no more King of Cabool than 
the Duke of Bourdeaux is King of France, and we had no more 
right to substitute a friendly for an alleged unfriendly power in 
Affghanistan, than we have to attempt such a substitution at 
Algiers or on the banks of the Seine.' 5 



Such were the conclusions come to by an Indian director, and 
that Indian director perhaps the most qualified to form a correct 
judgment; and this judgment was formed upon the mutilated 
case alone which the Government itself had presented—not to 
enlighten, but to pervert opinion. 

Now let ns go to the evidence upon which the Indian Govern- 
ment itself knew, judged, and acted, — to the authority of Sir A. 
Burnes, and Sir W. Macnaughten — evidence the importance of 
which is raised immeasurably by the attempt to suppress it. 

Sir W. Macnaughten writing officially on behalf of Lord 
Auckland to the British envoy in Persia, on the 10th April, 
1837, says : — 

" The circumstance of the British Government having resolved decidedly to 
discourage the prosecution by the ex-King Shah Soojah, so long as he may re- 
main under our protection, of further schemes of hostility, may be found a 
means of useful influence in our favour." 

The Government of India then felt that the very idea of Eng- 
land's encouraging such schemes against the ruler of Cabool was 
injurious to its power, influence, and character in Central Asia. 
Sir A. Burnes, on the 26th January, 1838, writes : — 

" Under such circumstances it might be urged that all interference had better 
be avoided, but this (interference with Dost Mahomed) is, it appears to me, 
under the existing state of affairs, a very doubtful policy, unless it is intended to 
put forth the ex-King at Loodiana, and secure through him a footing in these 
countries, and sweep the present rulers from their authority, which has happily 
never been contemplated." 

This is from one of the suppressed letters of Sir A. Burnes. 

In reference to the arrival of Lieut. Vicovich at Cabool, the 
source of so much alarm, and the pretext put forth for these 
lamentable transactions, we have Sir A. Burnes writing to the 
Indian Government, on the 20th December, 1837 : — 

"On the morning of the 19th (that is yesterday) the Ameer came over from 
the Bala Hissar, early in the morning with a letter from his son, the Governor 
of Ghuznee. Dost Mahomed said that he had come for my counsel on that oc- 
casion, that he wished to have nothing to do with any other power than the 
British, that he did not wish to receive any agent of any power whatever so long 
as he had a hope of sympathy from us, and that he would order the Russian 
agent to be turned out, detained on the road, or act in any way I desired. 

This passage is also suppressed in the document as it appears 
in the Parliamentary Papers. 

That which Sir A. Burnes desired was that the Russian agent 
should be received ; and the ground of his subsequent departure 
from Cabool was that the Russian agent was there; and the 
ground of Lord Auckland's invasion of Afghanistan was that that 
Russian agent had been received ! 

In another suppressed passage, Sir A. Burnes says : — 

" It is evident then that in this chief (Dost Mahomed) we have one who is 
ready to meet us ; and from what is passing in Central Asia at this moment, it 
is anything but desirable to exhibit indifference to the solicitations of one whose 
position makes him courted, and whose aid may render him powerful for or 
against us." 



•24 



Sir W. Maenaughten speaks as follows (also suppressed pas- 
sage) :— 

" It was now our object to mark our wish for the maintenance of their (the 
chiefs of Cabool and Candahar) actual position in Afghanistan, being the most 
just course of proceeding in itself, and as the existing division of power among 
them is felt to be on the whole deeidedly the most beneficial to British interests/' 

These quotations, I think, suffice to establish not only the first, 
but the second of the positions I advance. They establish that 
Dost Mahomed was friendly, — establish it upon the evidence of 
the Indian Government's authorities itself, — which proves my 
second position, that the Indian Government was not deceived 
as to Dost Mahomed's friendliness. 

I now come to the third position — namely, that had Dost Ma- 
homed been unfriendly to us he could not have been friendly to 
the Persians or the Russians. 

The preliminary observations on the first position tell equally 
with respect to this one. I content myself, therefore, with ad- 
ducing testimony from Indian official sources respecting it. 

In a letter of Sir A. Burnes, of the 27th July, 1837, but not 
yet published, he says : — - 

ft That he had heard of the arrival of a Persian envoy at Candahar, and re- 
ceived much support to his opinions from finding his correspondence so strong 
upon the improbability of Sheah ascendancy at Cabool. He had always looked 
upon it as highly improbable." 

The word "Sheah" designating at once the religious and 
political animosity existing between Persians and Affghans, 
and therefore the double impossibility, at least at that time, of 
anticipating any connection between an Affgban ruler and the 
Persians as a means of support to him, such connection being 
necessarily a source of weakness and of danger. 

Again, Sir A. Burnes, on the 15th of January, 1838, in one of 
the subsequently published suppressed passages, says : — 

" Since arriving here (at Cabool) I have seen an agent of Persia, with allur- 
ing promises, after penetrating as far a3 Candahar, compelled to quit the 
country, because no one was sent to invite him to Cabool. Following him, an 
agent of Russia, with letters highly complimentary and promises more than sub- 
stantial, has experienced no more civility than is due by the laws of hospitality 
and nations. It may be urged by some that the offers of one or both were 
fallacious. But such a dictum is certainly premature. The Ameer of Cabool 
has sought no aid in his arguments from such offers, but has said that his 

INTERESTS ARE BOUND UP IN AN ALLIANCE WITH THE BRITISH GOVERN- 
MENT, WHICH HE NEVER WILL DESERT SO LONG AS THERE IS A HOPE OF 
SECURING ONE.'' 

After Sir A. Burnes had left Cabool — after all negotiations 
were broken off with Dost Mahomed, and he was threatened 
with the prospect of England, his only hope, added to the number 
of his foes — when Sir A. Burnes at Jellalabad is informed, on 
the 30th April, 1838, of the report that Dost Mahomed had 
thrown himself into the arms of Persia, and had appealed to the 
support of Russia, he replied that there appeared in this state- 



25 



ment so much folly that he could not credit it, particularly when 
he considered the religious disinclination of the Affghans to the 
Persians. He was answered, that "all the Sooriis at Cabool 
were horror-struck at the design." 

Is this, or is this not, conclusive as to the state of feeling in 
Dost Mahomed and in the Affghans, in respect to an alliance 
with Persia and with Russia? And does it not appear that the 
British Government had failed in driving the ruler or the people 
into the arms of either Persia or Russia? 

But let any one look at the facts, and then let him see what he 
must think of the drivelling of speaking of Russian or Persian 
support to the Ameer of Cabool. Had Herat fallen? No; the 
Persian army had been beaten back. Persia was proved to be 
incapable of approaching Candahar or Cabool, and her broken 
forces scattered westward ; her power of injury for years 
destroyed, and by the testimony of the British Envoy in Persia, 
proclaimed in India, the result had been the complete discom- 
fiture of Russian influence at that court. Whence, then, could 
strength arise from the regions in the west, which could offer to 
the Caboolee a shadow of protection ? Whence this Russian 
support to be derived? Was Russia on the Paropamisus ? Was 
she established at Khiva ? Did she command in Bokhara ? 
Had she crossed Transoxiana ? Had she emerged from the 
steppes of the Ural and subjugated the Hordes ? No. The 
Khivan expedition had not yet even failed, for it had not been 
undertaken. 

Dost Mahomed's unfriendliness to England could, therefore, 
not become friendliness for Persia or for Russia ; and had he 
been friendly to Persia and to Russia, and had they been dis- 
posed to support him, and could have braved the power of 
England in other regions in doing so, they had not the faculty of 
affording him support. 

Now we come to the fourth position — that Persia and Russia 
had no influence in Affghanistan. This is already established by 
the reasoning and the evidence adduced in support of the pre- 
vious position. But I may here add a quotation or two, not in 
proof, but in elucidation of the clearness and distinctness of the 
judgment of those best fitted to judge of the absence of any 
influence of either the one or the other at that time in Central 
Asia. 

Lord Ellenborough declared that the documents first presented 
to Parliament were sufficient to prove that the invasion of Central 
Asia had been " a folly he added, that the production of 
subsequent documents might prove it to be "a crime." The 
crime had reference to the character of the act, — the folly to the 
object. Had there been, in his judgment, apprehensions from 
Russia in Central Asia, he might have spoken of the procedure 
as a crime, but he would no longer have spoken of it as a folly. 
That word, therefore, implies, in his judgment, the absolute 



26 



absence of that pretext which was assumed, that pretext being 
danger from Russia; and that danger consisting in the power 
which she exercised in those regions where we went to substitute 
for an alleged unfriendly a friendly power. 

One of the Indian Directors, in the House of Commons, 
declared that the state of things that w r e went to upset was the 
one most favourable for the defence of India, This could not 
be if Russia had any power in Central Asia. 

Another East Indian Director used formally these words i — 
" There absolutely was not a shadow of a pretext for military 
aggression upon Afghanistan on account of India." In his 
judgment there was no shadow of danger to India from Central 
Asia, and, consequently, there was no Russian influence possessed 
or exercised in these regions. 

The Marquis of Wellesley has denounced, in the most 
emphatic manner, the author of these wars y as worthy of under- 
going the punishment of a Strafford, for crimes committed 
against England and dangers brought upon India j* which could 
not be if, in his judgment, there existed danger to India which 
they had averted by measures taken to counteract an existing 
influence of Russia in Central Asia. 

Sir Harford Jones Brydges has come forth in his latter days, 
to raise his hand and his voice against the delirium of the times, 
and has emphatically pronounced, " the man who could design 
the invasion of Central Asia as Jit for Bedlam, the man who 
could execute it as Jit for the gallows" — which conclusion could 
not have been arrived at by him unless, in his judgment, danger 
from Russia had had no anterior existence in Central Asia. 
Danger from Russia was to be the produce of those acts, falsely 
undertaken to counteract it. 

Sir A. Burnes, in a letter not yet published, of the 1 8th June, 
1838, says— "The Affghan nation will never submit to Persia 
but by fear." 

There has appeared in England but one elaborate investigation 
into these transactions. It has not been the produce of a single 
person, but of a committee of gentlemen. It is a Report of the 
East India Committee of the Colonial Society upon the Affghan 
war. 

After an examination of the facts and documents, this conclu- 
sion appears : — 

" Up to the year 1838 Russia possessed no influence in 
Afghanistan." 

And again — " The pretext of Russian and Persian influence 

* He said, " England's character can be retrieved by no blood shed in 
Afghanistan, but by blood shed on the scaffold at home." During his 
last illness he expressed his regret that he was unable to go to the House to 
tell them that it was not " by aggression and spoliation, that a strong frontier 
was to be secured for India, but by honour, justice, and moderation.'' 



27 



was groundless, and the war was justified upon pretexts that 
were false." 

From Mr. Masson the following testimony is adduced: — 

"Russia had no influence in Affghanistan whatever 

There had no Russian appeared there before Vicovich, and he 

was nothing at all The only way to make the Affghans 

turn to Persia or to Russia, is by England's continuing to press 
them as she has done." 

The Report just quoted, further asserts, that " there were no 
means by which Russia could gain a position in Central Asia, 
save by gaining an ascendancy over the English Cabinet." 

Finally, I may adduce the words uttered by Lord Stanley on 
Mr. Baillie's motion — words, alas! not followed up by acts — 
" that the English Government, in pretending to attack Russia 
in Central Asia, had but attacked a phantom, converting that 
phantom into a reality.' 5 

Concurrently with these judgments in England has sentence 
been pronounced by every foreign authority, and the German 
and the French press have set it down as an axiom, that England 
has been grappling with a phantom, and as one of them expresses 
it, " The words of the English Minister were, indeed, for England, 
his acts were for Russia."* 

In concluding this point, I may refer to a chapter of my own, 
fi Exposition of Transactions in Central Asia," which was written 
more than a year before these disasters occurred, in which was 
pointed out the total absence of any influence of Russia in Central 
Asia, at the same time asserting the rapid growth of her power, 
through the acts which England had committed under the pretext 
of destroying it. 

Against this array of facts and testimony what have we, on 
the other side, on the part of those who put the existence of 
danger to England from power exerted by Russia in Central Asia 
as the cause of the war that they have made ? Nothing but the 
assumption, that certain unnamed foreign powers entertained 
certain nameless designs. 

I must now leave the fifth and sixth points for a subsequent 
letter. 

I remain, Sir, &c. 



* Conversations Lexicon. 



LETTER IV. 



THE WAR ORDERED FROM HOME, 

AND AFTER THE 

PRETEXTS FOR IT HAD CEASED TO EXIST. 



u "With respect to the states west of the Indus, you have uniformly observed 
the proper course r which is to have no political connection with any state or 
party in those regions, to take no part in their quarrels." — The Court of Direc- 
tors to the Governor-General, Sept. 20, 1837. 

Sir, — I now proceed to establish two remaining positions, the 
fifth and sixth of those set down in my last letter — viz. that the 
setting up of Shah Soojah did not originate with the Indian Go- 
vernment, and that every alleged pretext for the war had disap- 
peared before that war was undertaken. 

That the war did not originate with the Indian Government. 

The passage placed as a motto to this letter shews what, up to 
that period, had been the sense of the Court of Directors, and 
also of the Governor-General, in respect to abstaining from inter- 
ference in the affairs of the states westward of the Indus. It is laid 
down as a maxim and a practice of British policy to abstain from 
all political connection with any state or any party in these 
regions. At the time that this sentence was penned a Persian 
army was marching on Herat, after two previous years of menace 
and preparation. It was in face of all the calculated difficulties 
or dangers arising from the control of Russia over Persia, or the 
aggressions of Persia, that the Court of Directors commended 
Lord Auckland for not interfering in those regions, and enjoined 
the continuation of such abstinence, in terms that marked inter- 
ference as unwise, and that constituted it disobedience.* 

So much for all kinds of interference in these countries ; 
but there was one mode of interference which has been 
especially selected for reprobation by the Indian Government 
itself, and that was the setting np of Shah Soojah. On the 10th 
April, 1837, the Governor-General formally announced his de- 
cision "decidedly to discourage" any such schemes, and ex- 
plained his doing so by the advantage to be secured to England, 
through the assurance given to the people of those countries that 
she had no such design. 

It may be asked how, if the English Government had de- 
termined upon avoiding all interference in those regions, 

* The first sentence of Sir Henry Willock's protest is as follows: — 
" It will hardly be credited that a measure calculated in so great a degree 
to influence the deepest interests of the British empire in India, should 
have been undertaken without the concurrence of the Court of Directors." 

It was not undertaken without their concurrence, but in defiance of their 
express and accepted orders. 



29 



and had specially set its face against any project for the setting 
up of Shah Soojah, there could be any need that it should 
disavow such a design ? The necessity of the disavowal arose 
from this : — that Russia had announced it to be the inten- 
tion of the Biitish Government to set up Shah Soojah. It 
was through the fears which she thus inspired of the projects of 
England that shehad succeeded in gaining admission for her agents 
to the princes of Central Asia. 

Abstinence from interference, and special and decided discou- 
ragement of the projects of Shah Soojah were, therefore, the 
maxims of the Government in England and in India. A new 
incident, might, however, arise, which might cause this maxim 
to be departed from. A new incident did occur, and a most 
important one, and this incident is the only remarkable one 
that did occur ; it was the arrival of the Russian agents 
in Affghanistan. Let us see what the judgment of the Indian 
Government in India and the Court of Directors at home 
was on that event, and if it altered in any way the decision 
not to take part in the quarrels of the princes westward of the 
Indus. Sir A. Burnes, on the 20th December, 1837, reports the 
arrival of Lieut. Vicovich % the reply to his letter is given in the 
published documents. The reply is as follows: — 

" The Governor-General in Council attaches little im- 
mediate IMPORTANCE TO THIS MISSION OF A RUSSIAN AGENT TO THE 
WESTWARD !" 

This reply must appear very extraordinary to those who have 
read the documents in the garbled manner in which, they are pre- 
sented \ but Lord Auckland had read Sir A. Burnes's letter in 
extenso, as we now possess it, and he saw what we now see, 
that Dost Mahomed^ instead of being desirous or able to grasp at 
the proposals of Russian alliance, had seized the occasion of the 
arrival of this agent, most emphatically to mark his devotion 
to England. This new incident had, therefore, in no ways altered 
the previous conclusions of the Governor-General ; and as no 
evidence is given to us of any alteration in the judgment of the 
Court of Directors, and as any alteration in this sense in their 
judgment would have been made the most of, we have reason to 
assume, until the reverse is proved, that the mission of Lieut. 
Vicovich did not alter their conclusion or their orders recom- 
mending and requiring " no political connection with any state 
or party in those regions." 

But we possess, not more conclusive, but more direct testimony. 
Sir A. Burnes writes from Peshawur, 6th May, 1838, in a private 
letter that he had f< got wigged," meaning, I presume, in English, 
that he "had been reprimanded" for representing to the Govern- 
ment the necessity of counteracting "the most direct offers of 
assistance and money," made to those princes, by Russian agents. 
He then adds that he " had not got half way to Peshawur (from 
Cabool) before Lord Auckland expressed his fears of my being 
obliged to quit, and leaves the power to do so at my discretion." 



30 



He adds, 44 1 wish the fault were mine and not ray country's.'* 
Here, then, is the first indication of change in Lord Auckland. 
He will take no steps, attend to no misrepresentations, and then 
suddenly judges the influence of England completely overthrown 
in a country which at the very moment Sir Alexander Burnes 
emjDhatically declares to be entirely under our 44 protection.'' 
Lord Auckland had then been swayed, not by altered circum- 
stances, but by orders emanating, or by fears suggested, from 
home, and had been confused and bewildered by contradictory 
instructions. Then, indeed, he himself became the source of the 
evils with which he had to deal; he threw it upon Sir A. Burnes 
se to quit the country" or to remain there ; he deprived him of 
the means of remaining — when he had quitted he declared that 
to be the proof that the country was hostile, and that Russia had 
triumphed. Russia, indeed, had triumphed, but it was by his 
act, and not her own. 

Still, however, Lord Auckland had only been reduced to a state 
of bewilderment ; he had, as yet, no projects. On the 22d May, 
he wrote home to the Court of Directors, earnestly intreatingfor 
instructions. He had, indeed, already deputed Sir W. Mac- 
naughten to Lahore, to do something ; but Sir W. Macnaughten 
had, no more than his chief, any idea of what he was to do at 
Lahore, since, on the 23d May, when already in the Punjaub, he 
wrote to a British agent at Cabool, requesting to be informed 
what can be done in or with that city ! Thus the agents in India 
were running about in all directions, dreadfully alarmed, exces- 
sively busy, but up to the close of May having no idea whatever 
of what they were to do. Meanwhile a member of the Secret 
Committee was at the same time writing to India, confident that 
we were going to take possession of Lahore ! 

Sir A. Burnes, on the 3d June, wrote, "I believe that a letter 
sent from the Governor-General of India to the Shah of Persia, 
at Herat, would gain our end." 

Thus we have simultaneously the Governor-General deputing 
an agent to treat with Runjeet Singh respecting Cabool, and 
writing home to the Government in England to know what he 
should do ; the agent writing to Cabool, to know how the Sikhs 
were to be put in possession there ; and another agent of the Go- 
vernment declaring to it that all it had to do was to write a letter 
to Herat, the Secret Committee of the India House conceived 
orders for some grand expedition were preparing ; and, having 
produced all this confusion, the Government could now from 
home require by communications, t( not official perhaps, " the 
first bold movement in this wondrous drama. 

On the 26th June the treaty of Lahore was signed, a treaty 
clearly not in the contemplation of Lord Auckland, of Sir W. 
Macnaughten, or of Sir A. Burnes, in the course of the previous 
or of the same month. It is clear, then, that what the Governor- 
General did by that treaty was urged upon him by the Govern- 
ment at home. 



31 



By the tripartite treaty, Runjeet Singh was to assist Shah 
Soojah in regaining the throne. But by that treaty not a single 
British soldier was to be employed. 

In the meantime the proposal of Sir A. Burnes was complied 
with ; the Governor-General had written to the Shah of Persia 
such a letter as he required, and the effect of that letter was the 
raising of the siege of Herat, which was virtually done on the 
15th of August. In the month of September the Indian Govern- 
ment must have been relieved of all anxiety regarding Herat, and 
no further ground existed for carrying the treaty into effect. 
But instead of that, the proclamation of the 1st of October issues, 
announcing the employment of 20,000 British soldiers, the em- 
ployment of which had not been contemplated when the pretext for 
what was done still existed. This, then, must have been the result 
of new instructions from home. 

On the 8th of November, the Indian Government announces 
the raising of the siege of Herat, the discomfiture and retreat of 
the Persian army. It received communications from Sir J. 
M'Neill, that Russian influence had been overthrown at the court 
of Tehran. On the 20th October, the Russian Government had 
addressed to that of Great Britain a note, calling the British Go- 
vernment to account for its menacing attitude in Central Asia, 
which note the British Government announce as an explanation 
of its conduct, and accept as such, declaring it to be "highly sa- 
tisfactory ;*' and it w^as on the 19th of the following February the 
British troops march to invade the Affghan territory ; this move- 
ment, justified on the danger of Herat, the influence of Russia 
over Persia, the differences between the Russian and the English 
Cabinets, was not made while these operations are in progress, or 
these dangers in prospect, although they had extended over a 
period of three years, but was made after the operations had 
ceased, the dangers had disappeared, and the differences had 
been adjusted. This could only be in consequence again of new 
instructions from home. Lord Auckland could not have written 
to say, " Since you have adjusted matters with Russia, and since 
Persia has been foiled, I invade Central Asia." The extrava- 
gance of such acts alone prove that they could never have been 
undertaken by subordinates, and that they must have been en- 
joined by principals.* 

* " The assumed danger was the siege of Herat, determined on by Persia, 
under the influence of Russia in 1835. 

" The British ambassador in Persia, failing to obtain from England powers to 
resist Russia's action on Persia, suggested to the Governor General to send a 
small detachment of troops to strengthen Herat. He had, therefore, judged the 
country intervening between Herat and India to be open to such a move- 
ment and the people friendly to such an expedition. Months— years elapse. 
Herat is left unsupported, the Affghans become alarmed, and Sir Alexander 
Burnes, in January, 1838, quits Cabool, after rejecting the last supplication of 
Dost Mahomed that he should be protected by England in case Herat fell. 



32 



A pretext was given for a war which is no pretext at all for a 
war, if true ; the pretext is shown not only to have been false, but 
known to be false, and it had ceased to exist before the war 
was made ! If this had not been enjoined from home, it would 
have been repudiated. The putting forward of Lord Auckland 
is only a part and proof of the conspiracy. 

In establishing the 5th proposition, that with the Indian Go- 
vernment did not originate the design, I have also established 
the 6th, that every ground of apprehension had disappeared 
before the war was begun. 

In regard to the last, I have, however, a few more remarks to 
make. While every cause or pretext for the sending of a British 
force westward, which could have existed on the 26th of June, 
when the treaty of Lahore was concluded, had disappeared on 
the 1st of October, 1838, and still more on the 19th of February, 
1839, circumstances had arisen in India, which rendered the 
sending of troops abroad, and the undertaking of a foreign war 
more difficult and dangerous. 

u Lord Auckland admits," says a high authority, " that India was threatened 
from Nepaul, from Ava ; and that there was an uneasy feeling in India amongst 
the population, and appearances in every quarter were most threatening to 
tranquillity. Why, these were reasons for not parting with a soldier; yet sud- 
denly 20,000 men are to be sent out of India, against the advice of the com- 
mander-in-chief, who pointed out the extreme danger of that wild expedition." 

The decree of Simla issued on the 1st of October. It issued 
in consequence of orders, " not official, perhaps," from home in 
August at the latest ; the troops did not proceed until the 19th of 
February, that is for better than four months and a-half after the 
announcement of the design of invasion, and seven months after 
the orders from home. We have seen that the orders must have 
come from home for the treaty of the 26th of June — that the 
orders (entirely new, for all the pretexts had then disappeared in 

" The danger was now at its highest point, and no means taken to counteract 
it ; neither Russia remonstrated with, nor Sir J. M'Neill empowered to declare 
the opposition of England to the siege of Herat, nor the detachment in support 
of Herat sent from India ; neither the offers of Dost Mahomed to support Herat, 
nor his prayer for protection in case of the fall of that fortress accepted. Five 
months are allowed to pass in this state. In May the Indian Government acts ; 
not to send troops to Herat — not to recur to the good services of the chiefs in 
Afghanistan — but to do something else. 

" The danger which had threatened during eighteen months had not increased. 
While it existed nothing had been done to alleviate it ; aud after it was over, 
the means were taken to counteract it. 

" It was after raising the siege, and the retreat of the Persian forces — it was 
after the assurances of Russia had been received as highly satisfactory, and con- 
sequently after the dissipation of every shadow of such pretexts as have been 
subsequently advanced to account for the expedition, that the British troops 
entered Afghanistan." — (Report o?i the Affghan War, by the Colonial Society, 
pp. 37-8.) 



33 



Asia) had come from home for the decree of Simla — and so the 
order (entirely new, for all the differences between England and 
Russia had now disappeared in Europe) must have come from 
home for the marching of the army. How is it, then, that the 
home Government, from the very origin, concealed its participa- 
tion in the measure which it was ordering in India, and in which, 
had there not been other unavowed objects, it must have gloried? 
How did it throw the entire responsibility of these acts on the 
Indian Government, announce it from the throne as an act of the 
Indian Government, and wait until July, 1842, to avow that 
orders had been sent ? The Court of Directors had by that time 
itself demanded the production of the orders sent from England. 
And when at last they do admit that orders had been sent, they 
cling to one half the cloak, and say that the Indian and the English 
Government had "simultaneously cometo their decision S" There 
were three decisions, as we now see, each successively more 
vehement and extraordinary than the preceding one, and this 
vehemence proceeding in the inverse order of the alleged causes. 

The Government having come to a decision to invade a 
certain country, had of course, as heretofore, to declare the case 
to Parliament — they had to submit it to the Privy Council, in 
order that proclamation of war should issue in due form. Had 
they done this; that is, had they obeyed and observed the practice 
of the hitherto responsible advisers of the crown, that war never 
could have been made. It would not, it could not, have been 
matter even of discussion or of debate. It would have been treated 
as insanity. Therefore did they conceal it from Parliament. They 
did so fearlessly, for Ministers are a class exempted from fear, as 
"the days of impeachment are gone by." 

The discussions with Russia were dragged on so as to keep up 
the appearance of a difference, until it was possible to bring the 
Indian Government to act as desired. The Russian Government 
is called to account for its proceedings in Central Asia only three 
months after orders are despatched to Persia to come to a rupture 
with that power, and the despatch of Russia, which is then taken 
as satisfactory, is acknowledged to be so only two months after 
its date. Thus five months are gained, of a purely fictitious quarrel 
with Russia, she being all the time ready, by their own shewing, 
instantly to give every assurance which they require. During 
these proceedings, the Minister could not have stated his case to 
any one. Had he said (in July, 1838,) ei Now, I am going to 
break with Persia, because of Russia's acts," would not the person 
informed — say the Privy Councillor — have replied, "What! you 
break with Persia, and keep on friendly terms with Russia V 
It would have been no reply had he answered, " Oh ! I shall 
take no notice of Russia at present : " would not the Privy 
Councillor have gone forth saying, " That man must be instantly 
removed from the public office he occupies, and shut up 
as a lunatic." Again, if in November, when the final order for 



34 



marching must have been sent after the receipt of that Russian 
" assurance" had the British Minister by the existence of a 
Privy Council, or by the solicitude of a Monarch, or by the 
honesty of subordinates, refusing to act except on lawful authority, 
been obliged to explain his intentions, what would he have had 
to state ? Let us see : — % 

Lord Palmerston. — We must march to Cabool, dethrone its 
ruler, and set up another. 

Privy Councillor. — Are we attacked by the Affghans — are 
treaties violated, &c. ? 

Lord P. — No ; none of those things. But Dost Mahomed is 
friendly to Persia, and Persia is friendly to Russia ; and therefore 
we must destroy him. 

Privy Coun. — But what do you propose to do with Persia ? 

Lord P.— Oh, Persia is beaten back, the siege of Herat is 
raised, and we have nothing to fear from her. 

Privy Coun. — What, then, do you propose to do with Russia ? 

Lord P. — Oh, Russia has sent to us the most satisfactory 
assurances, and we have nothing to fear from her; quite the 
contrary ; indeed, she can do nothing, for her missions and expe- 
ditions have utterly failed. 

Privy Coun. — The danger is over, you are satisfied with the 
power whence it sprung, and after that you go to send armies 
into the territories of a friendly people ! 

The Privy Councillors or the Monarch must at once have 
said, 6i this is a case for Bedlam." But how, then, did Lord 
Auckland not see this — he, of course, had not the power to 
question : to him was shewn only what was requisite to mislead 
him. Do not the results bring into evidence the reason for 
those checks which the constitution has placed to the making 
of war, and which, unless in the present instance trodden down, 
would have saved this land from this deadly sin, and from 
consequences which must overwhelm us unless atoned for and 
punished. These are the facts which a parliamentary investiga- 
tion will bring to light. By that renovating proceeding alone 
can we regain the value of laws — can the knowledge of affairs be 
recovered, and vague disputations on the one and the other, filling 
at present the ear of every listener, and the mouth of every 
speaker, be purged from amongst us. This is a case of — the Tower 
for the guilty, or — of Bedlam for the nation ! 

The positions which I have placed in letter No. III., if 
correct, constitute this war a fraud from beginning to end — a 
fraud perpetrated not by the Indian Government but on the In- 
dian Government. It is a conspiracy carried on against the 
Indian Government, against the Indian Company and Directors, 
against Dost Mahomed and the Affghans, against the British 
people, Parliament, and Sovereign. Deceit has marked it from 
its earliest steps to its final conclusion, and the object of that 
deceit has clearly not been to advance the interests of any party, 



35 



or of any internal ambition. In all its stages it has advanced 
the interests of a foreign power, and, as was remarked by Lord 
Brougham in speaking of the treaty of 15th July, " Russia alone 
has profited by this act ; we must, therefore, assume it to have 
originated with her;" so, in the present case, Russia alone 
having profited by this conspiracy, we must assume, until the 
acts are explained, and the frauds disproved, that it was a con- 
spiracy of the Russian Cabinet and a British Minister, of which 
a British army, Lord Auckland, the Affghans, Dost Mahomed, 
Lord Ellenborough, Sir R. Peel, the chiefs of Candahar, the 
Scindians, the Persians, the Sikhs, and Shah Soojah have been 
instruments and victims. 

These, I say, are the inevitable consequences of the accuracy 
of the six above-stated positions. These sis positions I have now 
established on official evidence the most clear and irrefragable. 

I recapitulate them, for never was statement placed before a 
nation which it was more important for it to comprehend. 

1st. Dost Mahomed was friendly to England ; 2nd. He was 
known to be so by the Indian Government ; 3rd. He could not 
be friendly to the Russians or the Persians; 4th. These states 
had neither power nor influence ; 5th, The Indian Government 
did not plan the setting up of Shah Soojah, or the pulling down 
of Dost Mahomed ; 6th. All this was done by orders from 
home, after every pretext of Russian hostility or of Persian 
aggression had disappeared. 

This is all of record — all proved. 

The war is, then, a fraud and a conspiracy — the objects of 
that conspiracy is advancing by similar means in other lands. 

If the British nation can submit to this ignorance in matters 
of sin, injury, and malversation; if it can suffer the constitution 
to be overthrown, not by a faction that is powerful, or from mo- 
tives that it can comprehend, but simply because it neither cares 
for crimes — nor heeds injuries — then are we in imminent peril. 
A people cannot be saved against its will, and if it could, it would 
not be worth saving. 



I remain, Sir, &c. 



36 



LETTER V. 

PECUNIARY LIABILITIES— CHARACTER OF THIS 
NATIONAL CRIME. 



Sir, — I now proceed to the Reviewer's fourth asserted " minis- 
terial misrepresentation." It might appear to be lost time to pur- 
sue idle phantoms, but the necessity of public justice is brought 
into evidence by the exposure of the shifts to which the delin- 
quents have recourse. 

" There is a fourth fallacy closely connected with that (the last was a ' mis- 
statement') which we have just commented on and already partly refuted by its 
exposure. It is asserted that the Affghans as a nation never gave us the smallest 
provocation, and that consequently the invasion of their country was an act of 
wanton and cruel injustice." 

Had the reviewer believed that the Affghans gave us provoca- 
tion, that belief must have rested on the knowledge of the provo- 
cation given ; the fact would have been stated then by him. 
The whole question lay in that fact. There having been no pro- 
vocation given, the absence of a cause has to be concealed by 
argumentation. 

Cause of war is matter of fact ; Denegation of there being 
cause for war might be error or misrepresentation, but it could 
not be ci fallacy." Fallacy is a slip in the process of reasoning. 
To correct a fallacy we do not go to examine facts, but we busy 
ourselves in the value of terms, and the construction of sentences. 
The word " fallacy" is here introduced that the reader may do 
so ; and wonderful is the effect upon the heedless reader's mind 
of an appropriately misapplied term ; nor does it require much 
logic or pre-eminent ability to excel in this art. Mediocrity is 
capable of lofty flights when inspired by deceit ; nor is it more 
difficult to confuse the sense of multitudes than of individuals. 
Whole nations may be subdued by the fallacies contained in a 
single sentence, and with what apparently slight means may 
this be effected ! A monkey can ravel a skein, and a toad 
muddle a fountain. 

It is, however, a remarkable sentence that the reviewer has in- 
advertently constructed ; let us weigh it well. 

" It is asserted that the Affghans, as a nation, never gave us the 
smallest 'provocation, and that consequently the invasion of their 
country was an act of wanton, and cruel injustice" 



37 



According then, to the Edinburgh Revieiv, unless provocation 
has been given, our act is ie wanton" and " cruel." 

According to the Edinburgh Review, our act has not been 
the accompanying of a legitimate prince to his capital, but an 
" invasion." 

Here then we have the circle of discussion narrowed to a point, 
and on that point issue is joined. Invasion without provocation 
is wanton and cruel. The reviewer has to show the provocation, 
or he is out of court, and judgment follows. 

How does he proceed to prove his case? — Thus — 

le Now it is certain that the peace and safety of British India 
were threatened by powers, who were endeavouring to obtain the 
aid of the ostensible chiefs of Afghanistan to that end." 

Here is no provocation even charged ! The very statement 
made, doubly clears the accused by the absence of allegation 
against themselves, — by the special allegation of the very crime 
against another ! It was not by the Affghans that India was 
threatened, but by some one else, — 6t Powers !" And these 
" powers'' were only (i endeavouring" to obtain the aid of the 
Affghans ! 

From the reviewer's own lips, therefore, the " invasion" was 
" wanton and cruel." 

The reviewer, without alleging acts, proceeds to refer to autho- 
rity: " And ' there is no question/ as has been said by one of 
the wisest of men, 'that a just fear of an imminent danger, 
though there be no blow given, is a lawful cause of war.' " 

Who can this sage be in the motley garb ? W riters on inter- 
national law speak of "just Avars," and of c< lawful wars," 
and of " causes for war but this authority reverses the epithets 
that we have been taught, makes the " fear" of one people, and 
not the act of another, the cause of war ; speaks not of war 
that is " just" or ''unjust," but of fears that are just and causes 
that are lawful; and this "just fear" becomes a " lawful cause" 
of war, not with those who have given cause to fear, but with 
those who had not ! 

Surely, where a dictum proceeding from such high authority 
is brought down upon us to turn by its weight the trembling scales 
of national judgment and justice, we ought to be informed of 
the name of this " one of the wisest of men," that we may 
know the value of the authority, and test the accuracy of the 
words. The reviewer is of a different opinion. There is one 
sentence, however, which has not undergone sufficient change to 
conceal their source — 

" Tie whose designs and whose acts are directed to reduce me 
to submission is at war with me, though not a blow has been given, 
nor a weapon drawn." 

Are these the words which the Reviewer has garbled ? No 
doubt they are. 

To whom do these words apply, and under what circumstance 



38 



were they uttered ? To Philip preparing for the subjugation of 

Greece, (as Russia is now preparing for the subjugation of 
Europe,) by diplomacy, that is, by superior intelligence in the 
arts of trickery and corruption. Philip had his partisans in 
Greece and in Athens ; these men attempted to represent Philip 
as a " friend," and submission to injury as " peace." You have 
quoted Demosthenes, hear then the consequences in the following 
words, displaying your prototype : — 

"When I find a man apprehending danger from a prince whose 
residence is at Susa and Ecbatana, and pronouncing him our 
enemy, and yet speaking in another strain of him who is the 
enemy at our gates, I am astonished." 

But then, at least, the Athenians did inquire into their affairs; 
there were traitors brought to trial; and, therefore, Demosthenes 
could point out the visible symptoms of the disease by which his 
people perished, they were these : — 

£c Envy when a man has been corrupted, laughter if he confess, 
resentment if he be accused." 

The life of the man called in as an authority in support of our 
invasion of the wilds of Asia was devoted to arousing his country- 
men against an enemy contemptible in power as compared with 
themselves, and who circumvented them by art ; but over that 
foreign foe he could not prevail, because of the "enemies who 
lurked within the walls." But he, at least, had not the bitterness 
to feel that the alarms that he had awakened against the foreign 
foe had been diverted by <c the enemies lurking within the walls" 
to the active service of their foreign master. No armies of Athens 
under the pretext of opposing Philip, ravaged Susa and Ecbatana, 
and converted into allies of Philip those whom his own arms 
never could have subdued. 

And another signal identity : — 

" That which has distinguished Philip above all other enemies 
of Grecian freedom is this — that his chief instruments have been 
formed in the breast of that state whose public councils most 
openly opposed his greatness." 

May this mirror, preserving to us the image of a perishing 
state, serve to avert from us the doom which befel those who 
disregarded these living words of warning and of truth ! 

But to return to the reviewer. He has either falsified Demos- 
thenes' words, or has quoted some one else of name and authority. 
No such man could have written the words he quotes ; for they 
would ba idiotic if they proceeded from an expounder of interna- 
tional law. They are only sensible as falsifications. 

Such is the sum of the misrepresentations and misconceptions 
enumerated in this laboured defence ; and before I pass to the 
next branch of the subject which he takes up, I will recapitulate 
them : — 

"The grand fallacy of confounding the disasters of Cabool 
with the policy of the original advance beyond the Indus." 
The " second misrepresentation" " that Shah Soojah was 



39 



hateful to, and despised by the people whom we took him back 
to rule." 

e< The third mis-statement/' " that Dost Mahomed was all 
along willing to enter into an exclusive alliance with us." 

" The fourth fallacy," " That the Affghans never gave us the 
smallest provocation." 

Such are the four columns on which rests this edifice of con- 
temptible sophistry. 

The reviewer then proceeds : — 

" Having, as we trust, disposed of the principal misrepresentations and mis- 
conceptions oiLord Auckland's policy, in such a manner as to render them un- 
serviceable to any but the utterly unscrupulous, we proceed to notice those state- 
ments connected -with the war in Afghanistan which have the most immediate 
interest for the British public^ 

Now at length we are coming to the very essence and marrow 
of the subject — we have left behind us vague disputations re- 
specting the "friendliness" of Dost Mahomed, or the "popu- 
larity" of Shah Soojah, we must be approaching solemn matters 
of law, or weighty considerations of policy. We must be on the 
point of being instructed in those facts which rendered the war 
just and lawful, and conducted into those arcana of diplomacy 
which shall place before us in their true character, and awaken in 
our minds just horror of the dark and deep designs of the Russian 
Cabinet. I allow the reviewer to speak for himself. 

"We refer of course to Sir R. Peels statements, first, that the then recent 
disaster at Cabool would occasion an immediate and direct charge on the 
British treasury ; and secondly, that it was absolutely necessary to take into 
account the probability that we should be obliged to lend pecuniary aid to the 
Government of India." 

This then is the subject of immediate interest to the British 
public! Let us descend with the reviewer to his own level. 
Let it not be the justice of the case or the danger of the circum- 
stances that are the interesting points to the British public. Let 
it not be the sacrifice of lives and the drain upon the financial 
resources of India that are of interest to that public. Let it be 
interested only in so far as it has itself to pay. Then must the 
reviewer be prepared to shew 7 that it will have to pay, and pay 
largely, as the interest of mere expenditure must be rateable by 
the amount. 

The reviewer, however, immediately denies that there is any 
sum whatever to pay ; for he intimates that he is about to shew 
that " there is not the smallest foundation in fact for either of the 
statements of Sir Robert Peel." 

If there was no foundation for the statements, of what interest 
were they to the public ? and how can a statement of a probable 
charge, which charge has not been made, and to which he denies 
the " smallest foundation in fact," have the " most immediate in- 
terest"' for the British public in respect to a war which had 
brought disaster on Britain, loss on India, and which had led to 
"misrepresentations" and. "misconceptions" respecting the 
authors ? 

The reviewer represents Sir R, Peel as maliciously endeavour- 



40 



ing to destroy the credit of the East India Company, and assumes 
to himself the office of its champion. Let us see, then, how 
the Government and the Company reciprocally stood. 

The East India Directors had demanded the repayment of a 
portion, at least, of the expenses of the war, and they had re- 
quired from the Government the production of the orders sent 
out from this country for the war, to establish their claim to 
compensation, by 'proving firstly, that the war was imposed upon 
them by superior orders ; and secondly, that it was not undertaken 
for Indian purposes. 

It would appear that Sir R. Peel hesitated at first as to the course 
that he should take, and spoke in the house words that gave 
satisfaction to the Court of Directors, when, on the 8th of April, 
he said — " You do not believe, perhaps, that the financial diffi- 
culties of India will recoil upon you ; but if you think so, I shall 
convince you that the time is approaching when such a position 
cannot be maintained." At the time these words were uttered 
the application was pending and no decision had been given. 
But Sir R. Peel's first object was to escape from pecuniary lia- 
bility, and when he found heedlessness in the nation — division 
in the Court of Proprietors — timidity in the Court of Directors — 
when he saw moreover vistas of inquiry and impeachment at once 
opened, out, by submitting to the Parliament the pecuniary 
charges for that war, he hardened himself, and by the mouth of 
Sir James Graham deprived the Court of Directors of hope, and 
through Lord Fitzgerald refused to them the documents. Now 
what is the course of this pretended advocate of the East India 
Company? It is the first favourable indications of Sir Robert 
Pee], not his subsequent denial of justice, that he reprobates; 
that first tendency to meet the company's claims he represents as 
an attempt on the part of Sir Robert Peel to destroy the credit 
and injure the character of the company — of that body so com- 
pletely under his control that its credit was his own ! 

The reviewer then gives himself the air of being about to prove 
Sir Robert Peel to have been in error in the statements he had 
made in his financial speech of the 11th of March, 1842, when 
he set down the deficit on the two financial years ending theSOth 
of April, 1841, at probably not less than 4,700,000/. Without 
directly controverting Sir Robert Peel's statement, the reviewer 
puts it as to be inferred that he must have entirely falsified the 
facts, as he (the reviewer) shows from official data, that on the 
30th of April, 1841, the deficit amounted only to 932,908/. Well 
might Mr. Canning say that figures would prove anything. He 
arrives at these figures by lumping together, in the course of six 
previous years (from 1834 to 1840), surplus and deficit; there 
were 3,500,000/ surplus from 1835 to 1838; he therefore deducts 
this sum from the subsequent deficits, makes out Sir Robert Peel's 
statement to have been totally false, and shews on how very small 
a charge to the Indian treasury we can maintain great and 
glorious wars in Asia ! 



41 



The productiveness of the Indian revenue has nothing to do 
with the expense of the war. There have been latterly good sea- 
sons in India; the hardest pressure has been applied to the fiscal 
machinery, and all expenditure for internal improvement has 
been stopped. Thus have the means been supplied in a more 
than ordinary ratio to meet the expenses of the Affghan war. 
But the expense is not effaced because India has been drained to 
meet it. It may yet be found that the financial resources of 
India have been greater than those set down in the parliamentary 
papers, for others like the reviewer may be interested in conceal- 
ing from our view the vastness of the expenditure. How, for 
instance, account for the fact that in a statement published on 
July 5, 1842, there should be set down only an estimated cash 
balance in the Indian treasury for the 30th April, ]841? 
May it not be suspected that a larger sum had been realised ? 
The " estimated" balance is 7,460,000/; if a smaller sum had 
been realised, the error would have been corrected ; if the same, it 
would not be set down as cc estimated." The realised sum must 
then have exceeded 7,460,000/. The excess, whatever it was, 
was available for the liquidation of charges which then could be 
excluded from the public accounts. And by so much will the 
charges of the war be apparently reduced. 

There is another process by which, according to this mode of 
estimating the expenses of the war, the amount of them may be 
disguised. The cash balances for the present year, for instance, 
might be made up of fictitious values instead of real assests ; the 
deceit, indeed, will come to light in the following year, but in the 
meantime the purpose would be gained. These, I put as possi- 
bilities, but they are very hazardous ones, and if those who 
palliate an unjust war by treating as inconsiderable the expenses 
of it, are allowed to estimate that expense by a comparison of the 
aggregate results of revenue and expenditure, and if the parties 
have the faculty of adjusting the accounts without being subject 
to local investigation or parliamentary research, then will this 
war, by an indirect consequence, threaten to convulse and to 
confuse the whole field of Indian finance, bring in a new 
species of fraud and guilt, and involve ail transactions in mystery 
and suspicion. 

Proceeding in this mode of finding out the expenses of the 
war, by the apparent deficit of the treasury, the reviewer makes 
out a result, cheering as it is novel, and that is an aggregate ex- 
penditure from its origin to its close, of " 5,932,908/. or say six 
millions,'" generously throwing in the odd 68,000/. 

One would have supposed that it was a frightful result to come 
to, that of six millions abstracted from the revenues of India for 
an expedition an acknowledged failure. This result arrived at by 
falsification is paraded as a triumph ! 

But we have not yet arrived at the full knowledge of the 
resources of this reviewer. It is not enough that he should con- 



42 



vert a loss of fifteen millions into one of six, — it is not enough that 
a loss of six millions should come out as the triumphant result of 
an elaborate financial disquisition, there are greater things behind 
for his ingenuity to devise, for his audacity to assert. This six 
millions to which he has reduced the loss, he wipes clean away — 
he breathes upon it and it is gone ! He says :• — 

" The able men who have conducted the financial concerns of 

India accordingly opened a loan at five per cent., which, 

though represented as a" failure, &c may confidently be 

expected to reach five millions, at least before the 30th of April 

next Here then are two-thirds of the estimated deficit 

'provided for." 

Ancient legislators and modern financiers are left far behind. 
The men of old who refused to lay burdens upon future ages, or 
the statesmen of recent times, whose merit has consisted in re- 
deeming the obligations which the incapacity or the corruption 
of their predecessors had entailed, were idle dreamers; the Edin- 
burgh Review has discovered the real philosopher's stone, the 
means to nullify expense and to replenish treasuries, — and that is 
by debt ! 

But his work is not yet complete, two-thirds only of the esti- 
mated deficit are provided for ; he continues — " the remaining 
one million may, with safety, be taken from the surplus cash ba- 
lances in the Indian treasuries." 

How had he arrived at the six millions which have to be sup- 
plied? Was it by stating the positive expenses of the war ? No 
such thing — it was by estimating the deficit of the cash balances ; 
and how can that deficiency, that minus, be taken from that sur- 
plus which was effaced before a deficiency could appear ? He 
then goes on to show that as the Indian revenue will have to bear 
this particular sum, (as all other sums,) that this expenditure of 
one million is effaced, because the Indian revenue supports it, as 
the four millions are effaced because a debt is contracted for their 
liquidation. 

But, after all, the British nation has no need to take the least 
notice of such matters. That nation is assured by the reviewer 
that " the war in Afghanistan has not cost and is not likely to 
cost the people of this country one farthing." 

The reviewer began by saying that it would be absurd to enter 

upon the general subject while in ignorance c<r of the designs of 

Russia." This declaration of ignorance of the designs of Russia 

• • • 

was followed by the assumption that she had designs, for which 

Central Asia was to be invaded. Central Asia was then disposed 
of in order that we might come to those matters which have 
iS most immediate interest for the British public," viz., financial 
liabilities. Again we glide out of this, for every statement re- 
garding Indian embarrassment is false, and the people of Eng- 
land are not to pay " one farthing." The advocate of the war 
justifying it on the necessity of resisting Russian designs, com- 



43 



raenced with the assertion that Russian designs are " desiderata*' 
only in political science ; and the advocate of the East India 
Company congratulates the British nation on their not having 
to pay a farthing for a war which their minister imposed upon 
the Indian Government without its knowledge the order to make, 
and compels it now, against its will, to pay for. 

Yes! there are the venom and the sting, "inquire — punish if 
you dare— -if you do — you will have to pay !" There is the mill- 
stone chained round the neck of England, there is the prostra- 
tion of morality and of affairs ; there is the security of guilt and 
the triumph of treason. 

This, moreover, is the point which I have laboured by every 
means to urge in time on the attention of those whom it con- 
cerned ; had Sir R. Peel at once boldly and honestly, taken upon 
the Government the financial consequences of the acts which the 
Parliament, through its majority-created minister, had imposed 
on India, the English nation would have accepted it not only 
readily, but proudly; it would have borne it with the same ease of 
mind and circumstances, that it bore the twenty millions expended 
for a philanthropic purpose in the west; it would have been 
restored thereby to a sense of integrity and to a consciousness of 
its duty to understand and supervise the affairs of India : cha- 
racter and energy would have been restored to the East India 
Company's Government, the Minister of England would have 
had nothing to conceal and nothing to fear — he would have stood 
distinct from and uncommitted to the crimes of his predecessors ; 
inquiry would have proceeded in its judicial course to its lofty 
aims and with its restoring effects. England would not stagger 
now under a load of guilt unrepented of and unatoned for; nor 
her present Government be withered by such an exhibition as that 
of the 1st of March, when the Premier of England coalesced 
with the perpetrator of these crimes to refuse, on pretexts more 
alarming still than the act itself, inquiry into those deeds, even 
when that inquiry was urged by no less than seventy-five repre- 
sentatives of Great Britain. 

There could therefore be no positions more opposed than that 
taken by Sir R. Peel and that urged upon him by me as required 
by justice to India, as required by every human impulse of 
honour and honesty in respect to public malversation —as re- 
quired by the safety of England — as required even by his party 
expediency. That which I called for was repayment to India, 
Parliamentary controul over India, ministerial responsibility at 
home. All these are summed up in this ; — "judicial inquiry into 
un unlawful, an objectless, and a disastrous war." That which Sir 
R. Peel has clone has been to refuse re-payment to India — to 
refuse to the Court of Directors upon their unanimous demand 
the documents connected with the origin of the war — to refuse 
a committee of inquiry when solemnly demanded in the House of 
Commons, Sir R. Peel has been all that the reviewer could 



44 



desire, has done all he could ask. I have urged all that the re- 
viewer has to dread, all that he has laboured to prevent. Mark 
then the insidiousness of the juxta-position in the following pas- 
sage : — 

" Now we appeal to every one who has had the patience to 
follow us through these necessarily dry statements, whether they 
afford even a shadow of ground for the position which the Prime 
Minister had the honour of taking up during the last session in 
conjunction with the followers of Mr. Urquhart." 

In this defence of a high, solemn, international transaction do 
we find substantiation of its claims to public gratitude, as having 
been requisite for the safety of this mighty empire, or confirma- 
tion of the belief that it is an act obnoxious to the penal animad- 
version of the British Parliament ? 

The defender is in the position of an advocate that meets 
the charge of wilful murder by the plea of justifiable homicide. 

This plea he has not established, and he therefore leaves the 
act more apparently than before this attempt at justification— 

WILFUL MURDER. 

Let me here distinctly specify that which I charge against the 
late Government, and now against the present, which stands 
forward to screen them. It is not an " impolitic war," nor an 
" unjust war," but an unlawful war. This is a simple question 
of the infraction of law. What I charge is, ;< piracy," " rob- 
bery," and u murder." Matters as simple and clear in regard 
to act, proof, law, and judgment, as in a case of private assassi- 
nation. This is now the crime of the nation — of each man, because 
of all. We are all bandits, pirates, and murderers. We know 
it not, and therefore are we such. We are not thus the less guilty, 
but the more so. A whole people could not knowingly transgress 
its laws to its own injury, but a whole people may ignorantly 
suffer the transgression of the law by some; which in consequence 
of the ignorance of the rest becomes the act of all, the sin of all, 
and the injury of all. Why was the commandment given " Thou 
shalt do no Murder, " if ignorance of the heinousness of murder 
rendered murderers innocent ? He who knowingly sins has 
awakened his own conscience, which becomes the reprover of his 
guilt, and the ally of the law. But where there is ignorance of 
law, and therefore of transgression, where is conscience to arrest 
the man — where knowledge to save the people ? The conscious 
perpetrators are not more guilty than the unconsciously betrayed .' 
In matters which touch our duty, ignorance is the first, and 
therefore the greatest, of crimes, for it includes all others. For 
that crime which I have asserted, that of unlawful w T ar, the law of 
England holds each man that takes part in it guilty, just as much 
as if he committed murder within this realm. By international 
law every Englishman ought by those whom we have aggrieved 
to be hung as a pirate. The law, as the word of God, makes 
no distinction between governor and governed. He speaks to 



45 



nations as one, denounces upon them common punishment for 
common guilt, and vengeance as the consequence of guilt. In 
commission, in connivance, or in subsequent justification, there 
is not a man left in England, except the protestors, w ho is not a 
murderer — who is not guilty of the last of crimes a man can com- 
mit — who is not a sharer and partaker in the direst of those acts 
against which, to protect men and communities, laws have been 
made, constitutions framed, senators placed in authority, rulers 
set up and kings anointed. 



I remain, Sir, &c. 



In the course of the publication of these letters, certain ob- 
jections have been raised, which I think it may be advisable to 
refer to at their close. These objections are to the intention 
which I have assigned to the authors of those crimes. 

It has been objected that this war has been only on a par with 
other Indian wars, to which no treasonable source was ever 
assigned. I answer, that former unjust wars in India have al- 
ways been made through motives that were apparent. It has 
been for purposes of private ambition, animosity, speculation and 
profit ; in the present instance there is no intention of a similar 
description admitted or alleged — there w T as no bribing of English 
authorities to assist native princes — there was no insubordination 
amongst our servants in India— there were no ambitious schemes, 
and no desire of conquest in the Governor General ; and we have 
in the character of that nobleman, a guarantee of no ordinary 
strength of the absence of any such designs and motives. The 
whole class therefore of causes for former unjust wars in India, 
entirely disappears upon the present occasion ; and we must look 
for other causes than those which prompted the wars that formerly 
disgraced England in India, and which were put an end toby the 
trial of Warren Hastings. 

The next objection is, that the source of the war was the fear of 
Russia, which I myself had inspired. The Governor General did 
indeed fear Russia; but what I allege is, that the Foreign Secre- 
taiy at home inspired Lord Auckland with that fear, and then 
directed it to the performance of deeds which could not have been 
proposed unless on the plea that Russia was thereby to be 
counteracted, and which could be explained afterwards in no 
other manner. 

At the beginning of 1834, Lord Palmerston concerted a secret 
union with Russia, which enabled her to drive Persia to the 
assault of Herat, and to the avowal of a project to conquer India. 
At the close of 1838, he ordered a war to counteract her after 
having accepted her explanation as satisfactory. There was 
therefore a game played, and the figures on the board with which 
Lord Palmerston and Count Nesselrode were playing, were 
the colleagues of Lord Palmerston, the Duke of Wellington, 
Sir Robert Peel, &c. Lord Auckland, and the Indian Govern- 
ment. 



A third objection is, that Lord Palmerston's object was to extend 
the dominions and possessions of England in Asia, and that the 
complications and contradictions that appear, are the result of the 
measures taken by him to screen that intention of aggrandizement 
by pretending a quarrel with Russia, which had no reality. 

The solution here offered of a difficulty is itself a crime. If the 
nation willingly and deliberately proceed to rob and murder, this 
would not be the less a crime for the minister who lent himself to 
be the instrument for its perpetration ; but how much more if the 
minister, against the will and without the knowledge of the 
nation, involved it in such guilt ? But let us see what the con- 
duct of the British Government would have been had it had this 
intention? Would it have proceeded to arouse against itself the 
Affghans, or would it have proceeded cunningly and cautiously, 
to establish its authority, protection, and supremacy ? The separate 
Governments of Afghanistan had implored British protection. 
Was not that an offer of submission to British supremacy ? The 
British Ministers dethroned these princes, and set up a pretender. 

Had it been his intention to advance through Central Asia, 
towards the borders of Russia, would he have commenced by 
a denunciation of Russia ? Would he have fixed the attention 
of Russia upon those countries, and incited her to counteraction? 
Would he have given to Russia the means and imposed upon her 
the obligation of coming to the support of those nations by de- 
nouncing them as attached to Russia, and punishing them for 
being so? Would he have falsely proclaimed to the world that 
Russia possessed an influence which she did not possess ? 

If the British Government, that is to say, Lord Palmerston, 
was seeking to aggrandize Great Britain, would he not have 
prevented Russia from gaining an ascendancy over Persia, and 
would he have lent secretly the co-operation of England to Russia 
to obtain that ascendancy. Before admitting that Lord Palmer- 
ston had the design of aggrandizing England you must commence 
by admitting that he is an idiot, but at the same time you must 
admit that this idiot had obtained a complete mastery over his 
colleagues, and over the nation — which is impossible. The 
supposition then is utterly worthless. 

Had Lord Palmerston desired national aggrandizement, 
would he not have selected as the fitting fields, regions confining 
on our territory — of easy approach, of facile retention, and of rich 
produce : — were there any such within his reach ? There were. 
There was Burmah, with which country there was for him 
abundant ground of quarrel. There was the rich and inviting 
Punjaub. These he avoids, and stretching away to the barren 
wilds of a warlike people (leaving only germs of future difference 
with the Burmese and the Sikhs), he assaults those two regions 
where British assault is directly available for the extension of 
Russian power and influence — Affghanistan and China. He 
attacks the first without any pretext, having succeeded in 



4^ 



frightening a Governor-General with Russia; and concocts, by a 
process of the blackest villany, a quarrel with the second. He 
then takes care to prevent success in China, and to insure dis- 
comfiture at Cabul. 

Then, again, it is said that Russia outwitted Lord Palmerston. 
But what matter the process by which a minister is brought to 
serve the interests of a foreign power? If Lord Palmerston has 
been outwitted by Russia, of course he becomes her instrument. 
What I have to do with are facts, not motives. The intention 
appears in the acts, the motives who can know, and what do 
they signify ? These are matters not of idle tattle, but of solemn 
judicial inquiry. 

Thus arc we left, after examination of every fact that is pre- 
sented, of every motive that is assumed, of every pretext that is 
insinuated, without any intelligible ground for England's acts. 

Nor can these things, which cannot be explained, be considered 
as matters which the times and seasons have brought along with 
them, they are neither accidents, nor things endured, nor are they 
indistinct thoughts — they are acts — acts vehement and bloody- 
crimes stamped with every evidence of purpose the most daring, 
accompanied with deceit, concealment, prevarication and per- 
fidy. 

And for these you can find no explanation ! It is in this dilemma 
that I offer a solution — that solution is indeed criminal — but there 
can be nothing startling and extraordinary to Englishmen in 
what has become for them daily practice. The slaughtered 
victims are before you — and you are startled to be told that this 
is murder — you will explain it as idiotcy.' Your hands have shed 
this blood. You know not why, and you will reduce those who 
have made you do it to the same level as yourselves. 

I defy any one to explain what has been done by any other 
means than that which I offer. This is the key that opens every 
box — it opens each, and it opens all, and no other will open 
any. There cannot be collusion with Russia in one transaction 
without there having been in all, and this treason has been 
charged in reference to this transaction itself, before either the 
events were unrolled, or testimony was within our reach. 

There is from this a plain inference to be drawn — that the 
nation has gone astray ; that faithless stewards have got into 
possession ; the only remedy isbyinquiry — not merely an inquiry 
that shall bring home responsibility to Ministers, but an inquiry 
by which the nation shall know the state of its affairs — by which 
it shall ascertain what are Russia's designs ; by what means those 
designs are advanced ; what we have to do to counteract them. 

The present Government assigned as its reasons to the Court of 
Directors for refusing to communicate to them the despatches 
from England, ordering the war, that these documents criminated 
so deeply a certain person that it was impossible for any Govern- 
ment to produce them ! 



49 



The Government is thus in possession of evidence of a crime 
so awful as to be terrified by it, and fearing to bring it forward, 
submits to become its shield, and therefore its accomplice. It is 
for the nation to drive the Government back to its duty. If 
the nation is inert, the very fact of the crime having been com- 
mitted by one member of the late Administration, involves in 
that same guilt the whole of the leading men of the State, and 
surrenders the nation, without hope or struggle, to its conse- 
quences. 

In ordinary cases of inquiry into the proceedings of a Govern- 
ment, the worst that is to be looked for and discovered is error of 
judgment, or corruption of motives, and these are to be made 
out through scrutiny of facts. But in the present instance we 
commence with an acknowledged crime — an unlawful war — we 
require not even to know the reasons, whatever these may be, or 
may not be. The war was one of aggression, without forms, and 
therefore is murder perpetrated through surreptitious use of this 
nation's arms. The nation has been heedless respecting these 
acts. Some, however, have not been so. Finding their appeal 
to the laws of the land and the integrity of their fellow-citizens 
unavailing, they did proceed to shew to them other circumstances 
connected with the act, calculated to awaken their curiosity or 
their fears — they first placed before them the incongruity of the 
pretexts alleged, the contradictions of the statements of the actors, 
the fraudulent use of official documents, and established that it was 
in furtherance of no party doctrines, of no factious interests, for 
no purposes of national ambition, of personal aggrandisement or 
profit, for no injury received, for no danger apprehended, that 
this crime was committed, and they did this expecting that the 
Parliament might be moved to investigation because of fraud 
practised on itself, although it has been callous to crimes com- 
mitted in the name of the nation. Here again were they disap- 
pointed. They next proceeded to shew that this act being unac- 
counted for, and the pretexts alleged being proved to be false, 
there must be other motives behind ; that these motives might be 
of a description dangerous to the state, that these unknown mo- 
tives might spring from a foreign influence. They pointed to the 
results which have benefited a foreign power — they pointed to 
other transactions confirmatory of the same suspicion, and they 
said here are considerations, shewing that the safety of the State } 
no less than its honour and character, require that we attend to 
these matters, and ascertain where we stand, and what we have 
been about. 

On the other hand, the parties whose conduct has to be iuquired 
into— in what position do they stand? They are not placed on 
their trial — not subject to examination-— not even required to state 
why they performed acts or perverted' documents. These parties 
are a Government, and not one Government only, but two— 
the Government of England and India, and their position is that 

E 



50 



of suppressing knowledge of their acts. The actors have all been 
their servants ; all the persons from whom testimony could be ob- 
tained and who have been moved to indignation by their masters' 
conduct or misrepresentations — have fallen themselves the victims 
of the crime in the perpetration of which they have been engaged. 

About the year 1780 the public attention in England was 
aroused to the crimes then perpetrated by our servants in India, 
and the House of Commons addressed itself to the subject, 
inquired into it, and passed the celebrated resolutions of 1782, 
which suspended impeachment over the head of every public 
functionary in India, and converted guilt in India into disobedi- 
ence to England. These decisions were immediately followed by 
an attempt to bring to justice some of the criminals. The first 
person formally proceeded against was Sir Wm. Rumbold, against 
whom a bill of pains and penalties was brought into the House of 
Commons. The Bill, however, lingered, and in the middle of 
1783, the Lord Advocate complained of the thin attendance of 
the House whenever this question was debated, as shewing an in- 
difference and heedlessness in the nation alike to its own affairs 
and to public justice. On that occasion Mr. Fox declared that:-^- 

"To drop the Bill, it would be productive of the most fatal 
consequences, for it would convince the world that the most 
atrocious misconduct in i.\dia would meet with impunity in 
Parliament." 

The Bill w r as dropped, but the prophecy of Fox was not ful- 
filled. The bill of pains and penalties dropped against Sir W. 
Rumbold was followed by the impeachment, by the Commons, 
before the Lords, of a high Indian functionary. This happened 
because Fox's prophecy was uttered to defeat its own accomplish- 
ment, and was successful. The bill being dropped, the nation 
lost confidence in the wisdom of Parliament. Each man took to 
himself more or less a share of responsibility in the unpunished 
crimes that were committed, and of the guilt in suffering them to 
remain so. A renewed spirit in the nation called forth new 
efforts in Parliament. Law and justice found there a voice, and 
made themselves heard and obeyed. Since that period, down 
nearly to our own days, the consciousness of Governors in India 
of responsibility for their acts,— the confidence in the people of 
England, that their servants, gifted with the highest powers of 
the State, were not removed from the control of the laws, — the 
confidence in our subjects in India, and in surrounding princes, 
in the respect that we entertained for the forms and the essence 
of justice, — the respect and dignity in the eyes of mankind, as a 
people who, like the Romans of old, were the first to visit with 
censure, with animadversion, and with the last of punishments, 
the highest functionaries and the noblest heads, even for deeds 
conducive to extension of dominion and increase of power and 
authority, when these were unjustly devised or fraudulently 
attained these were the great restoring and enduring fruits of 



51 



the indignation aroused in the nation, and the thoughtfulness 
awakened in each individual, by the dropping of the bill against 
Sir W. Rurabold. 

But what were the crimes of a Warren Hastings, what the in- 
subordination of that Indian Government, what the consequences 
to England and to other states of their guilt and their insubordi- 
nation as compared with the events which, within the last few 
years, have stupified this nation, alike by their atrocity and 
by their infatuation ? What the insubordination of any Govern- 
ment in India, as compared with the perpetration of those crimes 
by the Government of England itself ? using India merely as a 
screen, and its Governor-General as an instrument. If such acts 
go unpunished, and if those who have committed them are not 
brought before the bar of national justice, then shall it be known 
to the servants of the British Crown, whether ministers in Eng- 
land, or Governors in India, that for them guilt is without conse- 
quences, disaster without responsibility — that there shall be no 
one to punish, and no one even to question. To our neighbours in 
Asia, it shall be known that in England there is no longer either 
honour or wisdom — that in England they have a neighbour pos- 
sessed only of mighty power to injure, and disposed to injure even 
those whom it is her chief advantage to protect. To the people 
of England it shall be known that the Commons are no longer 
the preservers of the nation's rights — that the high Court of Par- 
liament is no longer a tribunal for the maintenance of law, and for 
the punishment of orTenders — that for them there is henceforward 
to be found neither freedom in a representative assembly, nor 
security in a despotic or arbitrary Government. It is by putting 
before men these consequences of the neglect of Parliament to 
perform its duty, in inquiring into and punishing great and dan- 
gerous crimes, that now, as in 1783, Englishmen will be aroused 
from their apathy, become sensible of the dishonour of their 
country, and conscious of their being also sharers in the clanger 
which it entails. 



LORD ELLENBOROUH'S PROCLAMATION. 



(From the Newcastle Journal, January, 1843.^) 

The object of Lord Ellenborough's Proclamation of the 1st 
October, 1842, is to announce to our Indian subjects, and to sur- 
rounding nations, that England, in possession of Afghanistan, is 
about to abandon that country — an event that has no parallel in 
the history of nations since the retrocession and contraction of 
the limits of the Roman empire. This document is no less 
remarkable for the motives that it assigns than for the act which 
it records. It is a nation solemnly pronouncing judgment against 
itself, and in a sense of contrition and repentance holding up its 
sins and crimes that the full contamination and atrocity of them 
should be felt, in order that they may be abjured — in order that 
no doubt shall remain on subject within or stranger without, that 
the repudiation is complete, and that into our own breasts has en- 
tered a sense of abhorrence for that which we have been. But 
while this decision reverses the past in every deed, it clings to it 
by certain forms and expressions which seem, alas, the natural 
consequence of the long and frightful aberrations into which this 
nation has been plunged, and from which it cannot at once 
recover. Thus alone can we account for two passages in the same 
proclamation, the one describing the past policy of England in 
regard to Afghanistan as unsurpassed and unparalleled in wick- 
edness and folly, the other designating the acts of self-defence of 
the Affghans as crimes which they had committed. What can 
be more frightful than to halt in doing retributive justice, and 
while marking ourselves as having been criminal before, not to 
give ourselves the advantage of being blameless now? It would 
be to lose the advantage of the terrors which our arms can inspire, 
without gaining the security and the confidence which our inte- 
grity could have merited. But this, we trust, is but a state of 
transition, and that on the opening of Parliament the announce- 
ment from the throne will leave England's name cleared, and the 
full merit of her act obtained for our own conscience, as well as 
for our public fortunes. Under circumstances such as these, a 
great embarrassment presents itself in the rewarding of the troops. 
These troops have been made to commit murder according to the 
judgment of the present Governor-General. He commends and 
rewards them for performing those acts which, if they be crimi- 
nal, when commanded by the ruler of a nation, must certainly be 



53 



criminal in the performance of them by his subjects. The false- 
hood of this position has been lamentably brought into evidence 
by one of the modes which Lord Ellenborongh has adopted to do 
them honour. 

One of the most disgusting exhibitions of the late Government 
was the loading of the columns of the Gazette with the announce- 
ment of the names of the officers that were decorated with the 
insignia of the miserable order of the Dourannee empire. This 
exhibition is painfully brought back to our minds by the medals 
ordered to be struck in honour of the late deplorable events in 
Afghanistan . Could there be words of greater infamy and shame 
—names frGni which the instincts of an Englishman or an honest 
man should specially recoil with contrite aversion — than "Cabool" 
and " Kandahar V And these are the words selected to be 
stamped on medals to be affixed on the breasts of Englishmen. 
Above all, is it not painful and humiliating to observe that one of 
these medals was to record the name of our revered Sovereign as 
that of an avenger — "Victoria Vindex?" The Sovereign of 
England an avenger on brave men of the crime of defending their 
homes and hearths from a ruthless, bootless, and finally, a self- 
reproved aggression ! Neither the honour of England was to be 
retrieved, nor her injuries avenged, to use the words of Lord Weh 
lesley, by blood shed on the wastes of Asia, but by blood shed on 
the scaffold in England. But, Victoria Vindex, because we have 
re-perpetrated murder with a heinousness unknown by any people 
before us — murder and devastation without an object — such a 
memorial would be worthier of Timour or a Zinghis Khan ! Such 
a source of glory and of honour, if narrated of infidels and of 
pagans, would be the deepest condemnation that freemen or that 
Christians could award, and is in strange and inconceivable con- 
tradiction with the acts of the very man by whom such words are 
uttered. 

A little more than six centuries ago the armies of Zinghis Khan 
were simultaneously razing Cabooi, Ghuznee, Kandahar, and the 
northern coasts of China ; they were exterminating whole popula- 
tions; their victims were numbered by millions; the destroyers 
spared neither infirmity nor strength, neither decrepitude nor 
manhood. But they did so by calculation and for one object ; 
they were few in numbers — the countries they subdued were filled 
with an immense population, and enormous was the extent of the 
region over which their armies had passed in triumph, and which 
they had marked out for their future empire. It was necessary 
for them to destroy the fortified cities, and. to render their name 
terrible, and, therefore, the cities marked out for destruction, and 
the population for extermination, were destroyed and exterminated 
with the system and regularity with which any other military ser- 
vice would have been performed. And an Arabic historian, 
speaking of these barbarians, says, " these ravagers, unlike the 
rest of those who have afflicted this earth, destroy human life 
without, hatred and without vengeance." 



54 



Compare with these acts those of England on the same fields, 
We sent our armaments forth to China, not to obtain dominion, 
but to force the consumption of a poisonous drug, and we present 
ourselves there, as it has been said, with a dagger in one hand 
and a poison-bowl in the other, and words of contemptible hypo- 
crisy upon our lips. Into Central Asm we march an army among 
a people so friendly as to be ready even to accept our govern- 
ment — we set up a pretender — we support the perpetration of 
every internal folly and crime — we do everything that can arouse 
a people already subject to us through goodwill and respect into 
hatred alike and contempt. Our army is destroyed. We make 
up our minds that we shall have nothing to do with the country, 
and yet we send an army there again to ravish and destroy, with- 
out even the thought of retaining possession ; so that the contrast 
between the Moguls and the British is this — that the first de- 
stroyed and ravished by calculation, and without either hatred or 
vengeance : and that our troops, composed of so called citizens and 
Christians, and sent forth from a country honouring itself with the 
name of Britain, esteeming itself enlightened, philanthropic, and 
religious, appear there without any calculation, to devastate 
and to destroy, moved only by hatred and vengeance. As to the 
pretext, that we marched to regain the prisoners, however it might 
have served for the cry of the moment, it is too hollow and absurd 
to refer to now. The prisoners could have been endangered only 
bv the step which we took; and for them to be returned to us, it 
required that we should cease to re-perpetrate crime, and to hold 
as a slave the Prince whom we had so criminally dethroned. 

The ambiguity of the expressions of the Governor-General in 
his proclamation seems to arise from this, that he was startled at 
the enormity of the responsibility impending over those who 
advised the measures which he reversed ; that while it was impos- 
sible for him to continue in the perpetration of the crimes which 
they had bequeathed to him, he trembled to speak out his con- 
victions in such a manner as should make his act not merely a 
reversion in India of the policy there pursued, but an obligation 
on the Government at home to proceed to the impeachment of 
their predecessors. His act, however, requires not this confirma- 
tion to bring home to us that necessity. The question stands 
simply thus — the thousands of lives that have been shed of sub- 
jects of England or of her friends faithlessly attacked, demands 
the punishment of those on whose responsibility these acts must 
rest, or the advantages assumed to be secured to England by this 
sacrifice of life having to be atoned for by those who, in possession 
of these advantages, have voluntarily abandoned them. Either 
the past Government have brought upon England the greatest of 
known disasters in our history, or the present Government are 
guiltv of the most frightful pusillanimity and betrayal that ever a 
Government of England has been guilty of or charged with. They 
stand face to face to each other, the one necessarily bringing 



55 



home the evidence of guilt to the other, so that itself should be 
blameless — the one necessarily alleging against the other guilt 
such as to render it impossible for it to be guiltless unless it pur- 
sues the guilty to trial and to condemnation. 

But, independently of the question of guilt of men, there is the 
matter of policy of a state — the one or the other in a mere human 
political point of view of these two courses must be false and 
fatal. If there were no guilt — if there were no crimes to be 
avenged of men against the state, or no retribution to be averted 
for crimes by this state against others — an investigation is neces- 
sary into the causes of these acts, in order that this nation should 
know what is expedient for it and what the reverse, in order that 
it may not be thrown from one line of conduct to another because 
of the accidental change of men who govern affairs, in order that 
by the investigation of the past and the knowledge of our present 
position, it may not be possible for men who have taken opposite 
courses to be supported merely because they belonged to opposite 
parties in one or other course fatal to the honour and interests of 
this land. 

Independently of the two grounds of guilt and of expediency 
comes the matter of internal liberties. The highest function of 
the sovereign, as the highest power of the monarch, lies in the 
use of that mighty instrument docilely formed and ably disci- 
plined to its hand — the army. If the army of England can be 
employed by the sovereign without reference to the interests, and 
therefore the will of the nation, the freedom of this state is over- 
thrown. But if a cabal of men, or some one amongst them acci- 
dentally in possession of the seals of office, use this weapon against 
the law and without the knowledge of the nation, and in opposi- 
tion to its interests and its will — then are the liberties of this em- 
pire laid prostrate. This is what has been done. The Ministers, 
as possessing a majority in Parliament, connected not with the 
matter in question, but with internal disputations, become the 
responsible advisers of the Crown. As the responsible advisers 
of the Crown, they used its prerogative in using its army, and 
thereby prevented inquiry or knowledge on the part of the Par- 
liament by committing the nation before the Parliament was 
aware. Thus is at once overthrown the prerogative of the Mo- 
narch and the privileges of Parliament. And must not all that 
is good in a constitution be ruined when it is brought to the per- 
petration of crime and folly? 

Independently of all these considerations, there is the personal 
character of all the men engaged ; there is no man connected with 
Indian affairs whose character is not placed in a predicament 
which a few years ago would have made each and all of them 
demand the most severe and searching scrutiny into their acts. 
If these men are honest — if they are honourable — if they are 
blameless — there is not one of them that will not seek, urge, re- 
quire from the Parliament and the nation, investigation into their 



56 



own conduct; and, if those men so compromised and committed 
do not demand this inquiry, then is every argument for inquiry 
tenfold increased. On ail these grounds, there is an evident ne- 
cessity that the Parliament should exercise now its highest func- 
tions — that it should exercise that power which has been con- 
ceived as more essential to the good conduct of the state than its 
control over the granting of supplies, namely, the detection and 
punishment of high crimes and misdemeanors in great public 
functionaries — the protection, in fine, of the nation against the use 
of its own power for its own destruction. 

We repeat that the question of impeachment is no longer a 
remote and an airy speculation— it is a practical, and immediate, 
and pressing subject ; it is time for us now to begin to turn back 
to past acts and events, to precedents of national justice and of 
public malversation, and to gather in them at once the spirit in 
which it is befitting for us to approach this no longer political but 
judicial arena, and to ascertain the forms and circumstances 
under which such a cause is to be opened. 



CONSEQUENCES OF LORD ELLENBOROUGH's PROCLAMATION. 

Lord Ellenborough has consciously or unconsciously made 
it incumbent on any Parliament worthy of the name, either to 
record its condemnation of his acts and his words, or proceed to an 
inquiry solemn and severe into the grounds and origin of the 
war. From this will either result his own political extinction, 
or the impeachment of others. We must not permit a weather- 
cock policy in such things as wars and invasions. We must not 
permit Governors-General to write epigrams for home entertain- 
ment, or fling party firebrands from our council chambers in the 
east. Lord Ellenborough has done far more and different from 
this, or he has done far worse than nothing. He has either 
penned a frivolous libel or recorded an act of accusation. If 
Lord Ellenborough were not deeply in earnest, equipt with proof, 
and ready to do battle for his words, he is unfit to be either a 
Governor-General or an ordinary member of society. If in 
earnest, and yet mistaken, then so gravely has he erred as to 
merit withdrawal and a vote of censure. But if right in but the 
tithe of what lie says, then may he be the instrument of a great 
deliverance ; then is the inquiry we have demanded a thing not 
to be escaped ; then will our affairs be cleared up ; then will 
fraud be made manifest, and guilt at length be punished. 

Some of the faults of style in the proclamation we have 
described as beneficial — as tending gradually to bring out that 
which, through moral cowardice, it more than half suppresses. 
There are two words not to be found in the proclamation, which, 
by its own showing, should have been there in uncompromising 



57 



simplicity. The war is neither at once abandoned and denounced 
because it is unjust, nor are the pretexts he tears down firmly 
and honestly branded as deceptions. He deals a hesitating blow, 
but fortunately it provokes, though it does not stun, and there 
is a chance that it may have to be repeated in sterner mood and 
with memorable results. Lord Ellenborough, we are sure, would 
despise the mind that did not at once supply the deficient words ; 
but if he spoke at all, it should have been perfectly to justify the 
new course resolved on, and that was by showing it to be a return 
to justice. If our retreat have not this attribute of moral gran- 
deur, it is indeed a miserable event. If it have this attribute, it 
needs none else, and none are worthy to stand companion to it as 
a motive and a reason. If justice do not demand the reversal of 
the recent policy, that reversal is weakness and shame. If 
justice do demand it, then let Lord Ellenborough plant his foot 
on that rock; let him proclaim it aloud; let him denounce 
crime; let him express the grief due from a Britain and a 
Christian that crime there was to denounce. He speaks of 
false military positions into which England had been enticed ; 
of mighty disasters, surpassed in magnitude by the originat- 
ing errors; of men falsely said to be hostile, and therefore 
warred against; of others falsely said to be worthy instru- 
ments and popular allies, and therefore supported by acts 
that were crimes, and measures that brought danger. But of 
what men are these the errors — who imagined delusive incite- 
ments to a perilous invasion— who vilified a friendly prince — 
who represented a coward tyrant as a creditable friend — whose 
mind is it that is liable to such perverse delusions, and is yet 
potent to march armies, and decree events? A man so full of 
fantastic error is usually hazy, doubtful, timid. This vain 
dreamer guides generals, sways councils, acts with vigour, per- 
suades, convinces, commands, and wields the knife for the cure 
of the evil he professes to discover with the cool skill and daring 
nerve of accomplished science. No— this man does not walk in 
the nebulous atmosphere of error! But where are the records of 
these " errors ;" where is minuted the process by which the brain 
that conceived them since contaminated successive tools with its 
own curious virus ? If it was error to deem the war necessary, 
then was the war unjust — if it was error to mistake foe for friend, 
and friend for foe, then was there deception in some link of the 
chain — if there was deception into injustice and impolicy, then 
was there betrayal. This injustice and this deception Christian 
England demands shall be made the head and front of the charge 
against the author of the Affghan war. Lord Ellenborough 
knows his predecessor's proclamation (by whomsoever dictated) 
to be no error, but as monstrous a fiction, as crude and imbecile a 
pretext as ever conqueror or tyrant put forth. Lord Ellen- 
borough knows the " errors" of which he speaks to be no child- 
like, passive delusions. He knows the papers presented to 



58 



Parliament to be no errors, but deception— deception not to clo.ak 
errors after they have been committed, but long prepared deception 
to mislead a nation. Lord Ellenborough knows that there is 
here not child-like wavering or frivolous imbecility, but stern, 
decided, and nervous Crime ; and with all this knowledge he has 
signed the declaration of Simla, of the 1st October, 1842, which 
places himself in the position of being guilty, unless he proves 
the perpetrators of these acts to have been so.— Morning Herald. 



RESPONSIBILITY AND IMPEACHMENT. 

(From the Morning Herald,') 

" The clays of impeachment are gone by." Such is the opi- 
nion of politicians of these days. 

" If the constitution should be deprived, I do not mean in form but virtually, 
of this resource (impeachment), it is virtually deprived of everything else that 
is valuable in it ; for this process is the cement which binds the whole together, 
— this is the individualizing principle which makes England what England is." 

'* We must guard this precious deposit — rare in its use, but powerful in its 
effects — with a religious vigilance, and never suffer it to be either discredited or 
antiquated." 

" A jurisdiction auxiliary and supplemental to all others ; the oldest process 
known to the constitution." 

Such were the deliberate convictions of Edmund Burke ; and 
the men of his day acted in accordance thereto. There is a dif- 
ference, then, between ourselves and those among whom he spoke. 

It was nevertheless they who purged the annals of India of 
blood and corruption, who preserved Britain inviolate amid the 
wreck of Empires, and, after twenty years of war with half the 
world, restored independence to the nations, laying aside her 
arms, more great and prosperous than ever. It is startling, then, 
to differ from such authority on a main feature of the constitution. 

There exists a formal process provided by our constitution for 
the search into, and punishment of, the high crimes and misde- 
meanors appertaining to office, and that process Englishmen avow 
to have become extinct within the space of about thirty years. 
Does the fact asserted arise from mankind having so improved, 
that we may cease to inquire into conduct and punish crime, or 
because a forcible restraint is imposed on the free actions of the 
laws 1 There is no bondage crippling our laws, and the asserted 
fact that we cannot impeach is only a fact through the permission 
of those who assert it. Is, then, the other alternative true? Is 
office in England, in the 19th century, the only sphere of action 
in which duty cannot be neglected — in which power cannot be 
abused ? Has office become a guarantee of honesty, and is am- 
bition cleared of every liability to err the moment that high trusts 



59 



are committed to it ? Every other function on earth may be 
honestly or dishonestly exercised ; servants may rob, stewards 
cheat, teachers neglect, soldiers desert, guardians defraud, — and 
has it been left to our age to exhibit functions where the word 
responsibility becomes a contradiction, because there humanity is 
without temptation, or if tempted is incapable of fall? Men 
have been known to fly to the shade of the cloister, or the cell of 
the anchorite, from a world too trying for their virtue — are the 
crush of affairs and the struggle of nations for us that scene of 
innocent security which others have found only in obscurity and 
inaction? If so, then is Downing Street more blessed than all 
the retreats sought out by philosophy or religion ; there are en- 
terprise and energy free from spiritual peril, and power goes 
hand in hand with a wise simplicity and consummate self-con- 
troul. But the truth of the case is too shocking for even the 
slightest indulgence in irony. 

From head to foot the body politic is full of sore disease. The 
electoral system, which is the base of our modern administrative 
pyramid, is with us a foundation of madness and corruption. 
The administration of affairs is almost reduced to a game of 
Parliamentary tactics. From the Exchequer to the Custom- 
house have we not heard, and do we not still hear, the details 
and the rumours of fraud, forgery, and peculation? Our elec- 
tion committees have become the dissecting-rooms of corruption, 
in which the result is merely farther knowledge of evil without a 
hope professed of effecting cure. Revenue, finance, and repre- 
sentation thus exhibit in their turn the power of individual men 
to ride through systems and regulations, and of malversation and 
crime to flourish frankly, despite every precaution of law, and 
every engine of publicity. 

We are still then no better than men have hitherto been — laws 
can still be evaded — office has still its sinister influences — power 
has still its crimes. But if so, whence a professed abandonment 
of the last and greatest process for arresting evil when it shall 
occur? It is strange if there be such abandonment : it is stranger 
still to contentedly avow and loudly proclaim it. If it be cala- 
mity to endure the guilt of men intrusted with power, it is surely 
monstrous to publish as it were a manual of guilt made easy, 
by proclaiming a prospective amnesty, and holding up to view the 
trembling hand from which the shield of self protection and the 
sword of justice have alike been flung. It is a dereliction of 
duty not only to ourselves but to public officers thus to familia- 
rize our ears to the contemptible notion that impeachment either 
is or can be obsolete, till men be angels or England the mother 
of only fools and villains. To exhibit reward, to repose confi- 
dence, is not all that a good man jealous of himself would ask 
that others should do for him. He will refuse no prop afforded 
by Providence to the weakness of humanity. The fear of blame 
— the risk of detection — the possibility of punishment — may be 



60 



to the best what the fly-wheel is to the engine, an impulse to con- 
quer a moment's weakness, and send forward the whole being on 
its round of duty. There is no right then to abandon others to 
only one class of those motives which retain men in the straight 
and narrow path. From the school-room to the State, from the 
State to the Church, there must exist a discipline. The educa- 
tional system or the administrative which attempts to proceed 
while ignoring reward and punishment, must prove an anti- 
social experiment, and, like all schemes repugnant to the will of 
God, fall to ruin of itself. 

Whence originated the deliberate proposition that impeachment 
is obsolete ? Obsolete ! — and become so within the recollection 
of middle-aged men ? It would be curious to trace the saying. 
The propagation of such words is clear gain to those whose interest 
it is that they should be true. Even to discuss a vicious opinion 
is to do it honour, and to scatter at least some of its seeds of evil 
to spring up in congenial soils. There are thoughts and feelings 
which are destroyed by expressing them, and there are some 
which to utter is to give them a root in the mind. Even so mere 
argumentation about such impudent assertions as that c ' the 
days of impeachment are past," still more, of course, their un- 
contradicted iteration, tends to realise the monstrous fiction. 
But this talking generation does yet more for the sophist who uses 
their shallow obliquity for his own bad ends; a startling proposi- 
tion like the above savours of a certain insight into the spirit of 
the times ; it smacks of a spirited liberalism in political morals ; it 
implies an immunity from the need of former appliances for safety 5 
above all, it is pithy and bold. The mouths in club-houses, 
therefore, accept it as a fact, and prepare their generalizations to 
account for it. Pleased with their share in the process, and pro- 
vided with words on the subject, they are vaguely and uncon- 
sciously interested in justifying the imagined fact, and hence the 
result so miserably familiar to our ears in coteries of party men. 
One and all consent that the main power of Parliament— that 
power which would make safe our liberties, even without that of 
granting or withholding supplies— shall be treated as defunct! 

As much rage as you please in behalf of overstrained and 
dangerous pretensions of privilege — but let substantial, important, 
legalised powers be consigned to oblivion ! The guiltiest official 
may thus look forward to honourable retirement, in company 
with the colleagues he may have duped, as the sole termination 
to his career of crime. He has to fear no greater chastisement, 
than his fractional share of the blame, implied by some majority 
recorded against the Ministry in general, and that, too, probably, 
on some party question, not referring to his office or touching his 
conduct. He may walk over to the opposition benches, as well 
flattered by blind partisans as any of his late associates in office ; 
and his worst punishment may be timely release from a responsi- 
bility which he dexterously transfers to the shoulders and oppo- 



61 



nents of successors. By mere parliamentary defeat he retires 
to ease and safety — the chain of opposition is broken — and a 
sponge is swept over the past. 

Welcome defeat, which arrests yet higher dangers, and with 
seeming roughness, but with real mercy, snatches from every 
risk and every anxiety ! Are there any among us who know 
these secret feelings ? If there be such an one as a great 
State criminal at large — some man conscious of power abused 
and trust mysteriously betrayed, think what music in his ears 
must the Babel tumult of faction be ! Better than all fairy 
" caps of invisibility," by it he is made safe from even a casual 
blow, for every weapon is passionately turned away from the 
unsuspected foe, because diligently occupied in internecine 
though purposeless combat. 

Impeachment deals with individual acts, with the misused 
past, not the exciting present or imaginative future ; it deals with 
precise and definite accusations ; it is guarded with the strict- 
ness and the methods of law. Mere expulsion from office may 
follow a colleague's blunder, the fickleness of the crowd, or the 
untimely desertion of a few disappointed clamourers for the good 
things of patronage; it veils, probably, instead of exposing crime. 
Impeachment deals with the realities of administrative conduct ; 
parliamentary defeat will be on that which Parliament discusses 
— on novelties in legislation, schemes of improvement, proposed 
bills or clauses of bills. The object then of a man deserving 
impeachment will be to cultivate the misapplied activity of public 
men, to direct attention to schemes of legislation, rather than to 
the understanding of acts — to the contest of party within the na- 
tion, rather than to that which is done for and by the nation — 
and at the proper moment he will hug defeat in these matters of 
daily debate — he will hail the ignorant triumph of such an oppo- 
sition as a godsend of escape and amnesty. He will invite, ex- 
hibit, and magnify the seeming penalty which he shares, well 
satisfied indeed if an injured country will accept such defeat as 
atonement, and adopt the dictum " that the days of impeachment 
are past/' 



THE END. 



WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR, 

BEARING UPON THE EXTERNAL RELATIONS 
OF ENGLAND. 



TURKEY AND ITS RESOURCES. Its Municipal Organiza- 
tion and Free Trade.— 1833. 

ENGLAND, FRANCE, RUSSIA, AND TURKEY, First Edi- 
tion, in 1834. 

(On the Diplomatic Relations and Position of the Courts 
of Europe.) 

SULTAN MAHMOUD and MEHEMET ALI PACHA. — 1835. 
(Especially the 2nd French Edition, Paris, 1839, under the 
title u Le Sultan et Le Pacha.") 

THE CRISIS.— 1840. 

(On the Character and Effects of the Treaty of the 
loth of July ) 

EXPOSITION OF THE BOUNDARY DIFFERENCES WITH 
NORTH AMERICA.— 1839. 

(Shewing the design on the part of the British Minister of 
prolonging differences between England and the United 
States.) 

CASE OF McLEOD.— 1841. 

(Shewing, in like manner, the design of establishing wrong 
between the two Countries, and cultivating animosity.) 

ANALYSIS of NEGOCIATIONS RESPECTING the SULPHUR 
MONOPOLY ; shewing the design of alarming Austria with 
fears of Revolution in Italy, so as to prepare her to come in 
to Russia's Treaty of loth July, 1840. 

DIPLOMATIC TRANSACTIONS in CENTRAL ASIA.— 1839. 
(Shewing that the English Minister had surrendered Persia 
to Russia, in order to prepare a pretext for the Invasion of 
Central Asia by England herself.) 



THE PORTFOLIO, from December 1835 to June 1836. 

(This Work contains a selection of the most important 
Documents from the Russian Archives from the year 
1820 to 1830. In these Documents solely is to be 
found knowledge of the position of Europe. In them 
that knowledge is complete. These arc the very thoughts 
of the Government that, alone, in our times, thinks 
and acts.) 



